heese than to apply for payment of
money due to his father, it would be very hard for us to decide. That
there was an alloy even in Ontario Moggs is probable;--but of this
alloy his hearers knew nothing. To them he was a perfect specimen of
that combination, which is so grateful to them, of the rich man's
position with the poor man's sympathies. Therefore they clattered
their glasses, and broke their pipes, and swore that the words he
uttered were the kind of stuff they wanted.

"The battle has been fought since man first crawled upon the earth,"
continued Moggs, stretching himself to his full height and pointing
to the farthest confines of the inhabited globe;--"since man first
crawled upon the earth." There was a sound in that word "crawl"
typical of the abject humility to which working shoemakers were
subjected by their employers, which specially aroused the feelings
of the meeting. "And whence comes the battle?" The orator paused,
and the glasses were jammed upon the table. "Yes,--whence comes the
battle, in fighting which hecatombs of honest labourers have been
crushed till the sides of the mountains are white with their bones,
and the rivers run foul with their blood? From the desire of one
man to eat the bread of two?" "That's it," said a lean, wizened,
pale-faced little man in a corner, whose trembling hand was resting
on a beaker of gin and water. "Yes, and to wear two men's coats and
trousers, and to take two men's bedses and the wery witals out of two
men's bodies. D---- them!" Ontario, who understood something of his
trade as an orator, stood with his hand still stretched out, waiting
till this ebullition should be over. "No, my friend," said he, "we
will not damn them. I for one will damn no man. I will simply rebel.
Of all the sacraments given to us, the sacrament of rebellion is the
most holy." Hereupon the landlord of the Cheshire Cheese must have
feared for his tables, so great was the applause and so tremendous
the thumping;--but he knew his business, no doubt, and omitted to
interfere. "Of Rebellion, my friends," continued Ontario, with his
right hand now gracefully laid across his breast, "there are two
kinds,--or perhaps we may say three. There is the rebellion of arms,
which can avail us nothing here." "Perhaps it might tho'," said the
little wizened man in a corner, whose gin and water apparently did
not comfort him. To this interruption Ontario paid no attention. "And
there is the dignified and