"With you personally," he said, "we have no quarrel; you we have no wish to harm. These people are your brethren, and you are theirs. The only difference between you and them is that you wear the uniform of a Social System to which we are here to put an end. By that ending you will benefit as much as we. You, no less than we, are the servants of an iniquitous system, by which all the hardship, the toil, and the privations of life are apportioned to one class, and all the ease, luxury, wealth, and comfort to another. You are poorly paid; you are iron ruled. You must tramp the streets by day and by night, exposed to burning heat and biting cold, risking your life daily--and for no other reason than that the rich, the vicious, the luxurious, the sweaters of the poor, the oppressors of the people, may increase their ill-gotten gains and live their idle, easy lives of pleasure-seeking and debauchery. In risking your lives to protect your fellow-citizens against crime, you are doing noble and heroic work, for which you are inadequately paid. But _we_ are not criminals. We have done wrong to none. We are men and women like you, compelled at last, at the cost of our lives if it must be, to assert the common right of all God's creatures to live. We and our wives and children have starved and suffered over-long. But our rights we will have, so help us God, and I appeal to you, our brother men, who have many of you wives and children of your own, not to shed our blood, or to compel us to shed yours, in defending ourselves. You have done your work well and faithfully, as witness your heroic attempt--mere handful as you are--to oppose this army of God which, as surely as you and I still breathe the breath of life, is marching on to victory. Brother Englishmen, brother citizens, brother sufferers, let us not shed each other's blood. Join us; throw in your lot with us; cast off the yoke of the tyrant, and you shall share in the rewards which shall soon be ours." He stopped, panting with passion; and then--the words snapping like three pistol-shots following the one after the other--came the order of the officer in command of the police: "Arrest--that--man!" "For God's sake, for humanity's sake, don't compel us to violence," interposed the Dumpling with lifted hand. "If you wish to come to hand-grips with us, if you wish to test the temper of the people, you shall have plenty of opportunity, I promise, later on. You have done, at this point, all that is required. You have done your duty bravely and well. Few as you are, compared to us, you can do nothing more. For the present, at least, retire until the odds are less unequal. It would be suicide, at this juncture, to oppose us by force, for in that case I warn you I shall give my sharp-shooters the order to fire, and you will fall almost to a man." Again he stopped, and again came the police officer's word of command: "Officers, do your duty. Arrest that man."