The Revolution in Tanner’s Lane

must understand that politics in those days were somewhat different from the politics of fifty or sixty years later. Bread was thirteenpence a quartern loaf; the national debt, with a much smaller population, was what it is now; everything was taxed, and wages were very low. But what was most galling was the fact that the misery, the taxes, and the debt had been accumulated, not by the will of the people, but by a corrupt House of Commons, the property of borough-mongers, for the sake of supporting the Bourbons directly, but indirectly and chiefly the House of Hanover and the hated aristocracy. There was also a scandalous list of jobs and pensions. Years afterwards, when the Government was forced to look into abuses, the Reverend Thomas Thurlow, to take one example amongst others, was awarded, as compensation for the loss of his two offices, Patentee of Bankrupts and Keeper of Hanaper, the modest allowance annually until his death of £11,380 14s. 6d. The men and women of that time, although there were scarcely any newspapers, were not fools, and there was not a Nottingham weaver who put a morsel of bread in his hungry belly who did not know that two morsels might have gone there if there were no impost on foreign corn to maintain rents, and if there were no interest to pay on money borrowed to keep these sacred kings and lords safe in their palaces and parks. Opinion at the Red Lion Friends of the People Club was much divided. Some were for demonstrations and agitation, whilst others were for physical force. The discussion went on irregularly amidst much tumult.

“How long would they have waited over the water if they had done nothing but jaw? They met together and tore down the Bastile, and that’s what we must do.”

“That may be true,” said a small white-faced man who neither smoked nor drank, “but what followed? You don’t do anything really till you’ve reasoned it out.”

“It’s my belief, parson,” retorted the other, “that you are in a d⁠⸺⁠d funk. This is not the place for Methodists.”

“Order, order!” shouted the chairman.

“I am not a Methodist,” quietly replied the other; “unless you mean by Methodist a man who fears God and loves his Saviour. I am not ashamed to own that, and I am none the worse for it as far as I know. As for being a coward, we shall see.”

The Secretary meanwhile had gone on with his beer. Despite his notorious failing, he had been chosen for the post because in his sober moments he was quick with his pen. He was not a working man; nay, it was said he had been at Oxford. His present profession was that of attorney’s clerk. He got up and began a harangue about Brutus.

“There’s one way of dealing with tyrants⁠—the old way, Mr. Chairman. Death to them all, say I; the shortcut; none of your palaver; what’s the use of palavering?”

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.”

He stopped in the street, and with an oratorical air repeated the well-known lines, “Men are born and always continue free, and equal in respect of their rights.⁠ ⁠… Every citizen has a right, either by himself or by his representative, to a free voice in determining