Hall commenced by reminding the audience that they all knew him, and knew he was no landlord. He was a mechanic, and a labouring man, like most of themselves, and had no interest that could be separate from the general good of society. This opening was a little homage to prejudice, since reason is reason, and right right, let them come whence they will. "I, too, am a democrat," he went on to say, "but I do not understand democracy to mean anything like that which has been described by the last speaker. I tell that gentleman plainly, that if he is a democrat, I am none; and if I am a democrat, he is none. By democracy I understand a government in which the sovereign power resides in the body of the nation; and not in a few, or in one. But this principle no more gives the body of the people authority to act wrong, than in a monarchy, in which the sovereign power resides in one man, that one man has a right to act wrong. By equality, I do not understand anything more than equality before the law--now, if the law had said that when the late Malbone Littlepage died, his farms should go not to his next of kin, or to his devisee, but to his neighbours, then that would have been the law to be obeyed, although it would be a law destructive of civilization, since men would never accumulate property to go to the public. Something nearer home is necessary to make men work, and deny themselves what they like. "The gentleman has told us of a sort of political leap-year that is to regulate the social calender. I understand him to mean that when property has got to be unequal, it must be divided up, in order that men may make a new start. I fear he will have to dispense with leap years, and come to leap months, or leap weeks, ay, or even to leap days; for, was the property of this township divided up this very morning, and in this meetin'-us, it would get to be unequal before night. Some folks can't keep money when they have it; and others can't keep their hands off it.