There was, however, some excuse for him. He had been several times candidate for city register, and hence was more anxious to secure votes than flour--be a popular demagogue rather than a public benefactor. But there were other speakers who kept more directly to the point. They launched at once into a bitter tirade against landlords for their high rents, and against monopolists for holding on to flour at the expense of the poor and suffering. Knowing the character of the audience before them, and their bitter hatred of the rich that had grown with their growth, and strengthened with their strength in the old country, it was not difficult to lash them into a tempest of passion. They depicted the aristocrats around them rolling in wealth, wrung from their necessities--laughing at their sufferings while rioting in luxury--nay, hoarding up the very bread without which they must starve, in order to realize a few dollars more on a barrel of flour. Loud oaths and deep muttered curses followed these appeals, and the excited multitude became agitated with passion. One of the speakers closed his bitter harangue with "Fellow-citizens, Mr. Eli Hart has now 53,000 barrels of flour in his store; let us go and offer him eight dollars a barrel for it, and if he will not take it--" It was not difficult to know how he meant to close the sentence; but just then, a friend shrewder than he, seeing the legal consequences to themselves of an open proposition to resort to violence, touched him on the shoulder, when in a lower tone of voice he concluded: "_we shall depart in peace_." In the excitement of the moment, he had evidently forgotten the guarded language he intended to use, and was about to utter that which would have consigned him to a prisoner's cell, but checked himself in time. He was willing others should suffer the consequence of violating the law, to which his appeals urged them; but his love for the poor did not prompt him to share their fate.