till continued
their speculations could only do so partially, by diminishing the days
of service and increasing their stints or toil and by decreasing the
rate of wages as well as paying them entirely in goods, of which they
had a great stock and of which they thus relieved themselves at a high
profit. Add to all these causes of suffering and discontent among the
workmen the apprehension of still greater evils and the tyranny of the
butties or middlemen, and it will with little difficulty be felt that
the public mind of this district was well-prepared for the excitement of
the political agitator, especially if he were discreet enough rather
to descant on their physical sufferings and personal injuries than to
attempt the propagation of abstract political principles, with which it
was impossible for them to sympathise with the impulse and facility
of the inhabitants of manufacturing towns, members of literary and
scientific institutes, habitual readers of political journals and
accustomed to habits of discussion of all public questions. It generally
happens however that where a mere physical impulse urges the people
to insurrection, though it is often an influence of slow growth and
movement, the effects are more violent and sometimes more obstinate
than when they move under the blended authority of moral and physical
necessity, and mix up together the rights and the wants of Man.

However this may be, on the morning after the conversation at the Rising
Sun which we have just noticed, the population having as usual gone
to their work, having penetrated the pit and descended the shaft, the
furnaces all blazing, the chimneys all smoking,--suddenly there rose a
rumour even in the bowels of the earth, that the hour and the man had at
length arrived; the hour that was to bring them relief and the man that
was to bear them redress.

"My missus told it me at the pit-head when she brought me my breakfast,"
said a pikeman to his comrade, and he struck a vigorous blow at the
broadseam on which he was working.

"It is not ten mile," said his companion. "They'll be here by noon."

"There is a good deal to do in their way," said the first pikeman. "All
men at work after notice to be ducked, they say, and every engine to be
stopped forthwith."

"Will the police meet them before they reach this?"

"There is none: my missus says that not a man John of them is to be
seen. The Hell-cats as they call themselves halt at every town and