He was a little shaky, took hold of the rail of his chair, and as he sat down broke his pipe. Some slight applause followed; but the majority were either against him, or thought it better to be silent. The discussion continued irregularly, and Zachariah noticed that about half-a-dozen of those present took no part in it. At about ten o’clock the chairman declared the meeting at an end; and it was quite time he did so, for the smoke and the drink had done their work. As Zachariah came out, a man stood by his side whom he had scarcely noticed during the evening. He was evidently a shoemaker. There was a smell of leather about him, and his hands and face were grimy. He had a slightly turned-up nose, smallish eyes, half hidden under very black eyebrows, and his lips were thin and straight. His voice was exceedingly high-pitched, and had something creaking in it like the sound of an ill-greased axle. He spoke with emphasis, but not quite like an Englishman, was fond of alliteration, and often, in the middle of a sentence, paused to search for a word which pleased him. Having found it, the remainder of the sentence was poised and cast from him like a dart. His style was a curious mixture of foreign imperfection and rhetoric—a rhetoric, however, by no means affected. It might have been so in another person, but it was not so in him. “Going east?” said he. “Yes.” “If you want company, I’ll walk with you. What do you think of the Friends?” Zachariah, it will be borne in mind, although he was a Democrat, had never really seen the world. He belonged to a religious sect. He believed in the people, it is true, but it was a people of Cromwellian Independents. He purposely avoided the company of men who used profane language, and never in his life entered a tavern. He did not know what the masses really were; for although he worked with his hands, printers were rather a superior set of fellows, and his was an old-established shop which took the best of its class. When brought actually into contact with swearers and drunkards as patriots and reformers he was more than a little shocked. “Not much,” quoth he. “Not worse than our virtuous substitute for a sovereign?” “No, certainly.” “You object to giving them votes, but is not the opinion of the silliest as good as that of Lord Sidmouth?” “That’s no reason for giving them votes.” “I should like to behold the experiment of a new form of misgovernment. If we are to be eternally enslaved to fools and swindlers, why not a change? We have had regal misrule and aristocratic swindling long enough.” “Seriously, my friend,” he continued, “study that immortal charter, the Declaration of the Rights of Man.”