ion declares "that all political power is inherent in
the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority
and instituted for their benefit; and that they have _at all times_
an undeniable and indefeasible right to _alter their form of
government_ in such a manner as they may think expedient."

Under that gospel, the citizen who thinks he sees that the
commonwealth's political clothes are worn out, and yet holds his
peace and does not agitate for a new suit, is disloyal; he is
a traitor. That he may be the only one who thinks he sees this
decay, does not excuse him; it is his duty to agitate anyway, and
it is the duty of the others to vote him down if they do not see
the matter as he does.

And now here I was, in a country where a right to say how the
country should be governed was restricted to six persons in each
thousand of its population. For the nine hundred and ninety-four
to express dissatisfaction with the regnant system and propose
to change it, would have made the whole six shudder as one man,
it would have been so disloyal, so dishonorable, such putrid black
treason. So to speak, I was become a stockholder in a corporation
where nine hundred and ninety-four of the members furnished all
the money and did all the work, and the other six elected themselves
a permanent board of direction and took all the dividends. It seemed
to me that what the nine hundred and ninety-four dupes needed was
a new deal. The thing that would have best suited the circus side
of my nature would have been to resign the Boss-ship and get up
an insurrection and turn it into a revolution; but I knew that the
Jack Cade or the Wat Tyler who tries such a thing without first
educating his materials up to revolution grade is almost absolutely
certain to get left. I had never been accustomed to getting left,
even if I do say it myself. Wherefore, the "deal" which had been
for some time working into shape in my mind was of a quite different
pattern from the Cade-Tyler sort.

So I did not talk blood and insurrection to that man there who sat
munching black bread with that abused and mistaught herd of human
sheep, but took him aside and talked matter of another sort to him.
After I had finished, I got him to lend me a little ink from his
veins; and with this and a sliver I wrote on a piece of bark--

Put him in the Man-factory--

and gave it to him, and said:

"Take it to the palace at Camelot and give it into the