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me, no: they must go up to London, and be married by special license! This is your aristocracy of humility! this is your parsonic pride! Mark my words, Pokey, that pride must come down. We're not going to let it much longer ride rough-shod over the eternal principles of the people. We must tear from their eyes what I call the film of folly. We must make them understand these amalgamating dodges. We must do as they did in France under Peter the Great, when Robespierre towelled the Dutch, we must give the aristocracy a blessed good welting. That 'll bring 'em to their senses; and mind you this, they'll never be happy till they get it. We must have a revolution all over the world; things are now on a rotten foundation: your kings, and your queens, and your bishops, and parsons, and all the lot of aristocratic leeches, who suck the best blood of the eternal people, must be swamped; they must be swept clean away from the face of the earth, as they were in the time of the Romans. What do we want with an amalgamating mass of corruption fructifying upon our very vitals? Why should we give eighty millions a-year away for nothing? What good do the aristocracy do us? If you can't pay your taxes, away go your sticks; and what for? Why, to fatten up your flaming aristocracy. Do you mean to call that eternal justice? Do you mean to call that the glorious principles of everlasting liberty? What did we sign the Magna Charta for? Why, for fructifying freedom. If we had no aristocracy, we should have no taxes; and if we had no taxes, we should be free. I'll take you then upon your Magna Charta, and show that you are nothing but slaves. Would the Russians stand it, think you? Would the Chinamen stand it? No! The Jews wouldn't stand it under Moses. Look at the history of the world, and you'll find that nobody stands it but us. When Solomon built his temple among the gods, the Solomonians wouldn't stand it: they said point blank, 'Here you've got about a thousand wives, of one sort or other, and when we come to look at the mobs of kids, we are not going to support so expensive an establishment.' Even the very workmen struck! and we must strike, and when we do strike, the blow will be a stunner. It's of no use half doing the thing: we'll go in like rattle-snakes, my boy, as they did at Nova Scotia. We'll let them see what we're made of! we'll show 'em from which point of the compass the wind blows: we'll go in a burster; and when we do, the lesson shall last 'em their lives. We'll not much longer be plundered in this way: we'll not be ground down to the earth, and have our substance squeezed out of us thus, by the iron hand of an iron-hearted aristocracy. Not a bit of it! What did Johnny Russell say in the house the other night? 'I tell the noble lord,' said he; and Johnny can speak up sometimes if he likes—'I tell the noble lord that he'd better look out. There's a spirit abroad that won't have it. It's fructifying now, and will soon break loose; and when it does, there'll be pepper.' And so there will: mind you that. Down with them!—that's my sentiments—down to the dust! A rattler, my Briton—a rattler for me. Now, just look you here———"

"Well, but what are you talking about?" inquired Pokey.

"What am I talking about?"