In his own person he had witnessed how the actual breakers of the peace were those commissioned to preserve it. In the wanton attack on himself, an unarmed, defenceless, disabled old man, he recognised the general characteristics of the whole affair, and entered his protest against so lawless an exposition of the law. He was himself a peaceable man, a loyal subject, going quietly about his own business when Jabez intercepted to his own hurt, the sabre destined for his grey head. Matthew Cooper, his tenant’s father-in-law, was as peaceable and well-disposed; and if so, might not the bulk of the so-called rebels have been the same? In his gratitude to Jabez he denounced the mounted yeoman who had sabred him as “a drunken, blood-thirsty miscreant,” though in the hurry, excitement, and agitation attending his own withdrawal from the press by Mr. Mabbott, he had failed to identify his pursuer with John Walmsley’s dashing friend, and the exclamation of Ben Travis had not reached his ear in the confusion. Easy-going Mr. Ashton also seemed transformed by the event. He had certainly lost the valuable services of his apprentice for some time to come; but that was the very least ingredient in the cup of his wrath. By faithful intelligent service; by persevering industry, by a thousand little actions which had shown his interest in his employers, and his devotion to his old friends, Jabez had won a place in his master’s esteem and affection no other apprentice of any grade had ever attained. And now that Jabez had risked the dangers of the soldier-ridden street to bear his beloved daughter to a place of safety, and had braved the storm of foot and horse, and fire and steel, to rescue his brother-in-law by endangering his own life or limbs, his admiration and gratitude rose to their highest, and in proportion his denunciation of an outrage which called for such a sacrifice was strong and vehement—all the more that he sympathised with the objects of the meeting. When he and Simon Clegg (who had been drawn to the scene in his dinner-hour with others, like moths to a candle) picked up his cavalry friend, Robert Hindley, from amongst the building materials, and disengaged him from his dead horse, he could not refrain from telling the disabled warrior, with all a friend’s frankness, that “it served him right!” Open expression of private opinion on the conduct of rulers was dangerous at that period, as may be supposed; but private opinion became public opinion, too strong and too universal to be put in fetters.