necessary, at some critical moment, for the London volunteers to march
as far as Charing-Cross on their way towards Parliament and the Palace.
The concession would be there before them.

Mr. Holyoake, who is one of the most vigorous champions of free thought
and popular rights in England, says,--"Revolution is no longer necessary
in English politics. Our wise and noble forefathers, of those old times
of which modern radicals in many towns know too little, laid broad
foundations of freedom in our midst. It only needs that we build upon
these, and the English educated classes, who always move in the grooves
of precedent, will acquiesce with a reasonable readiness."[B]

The feeling of the radical class of English workmen is elsewhere
illustrated by Mr. Holyoake with a story from the Allendale mining
district. "Four miners published a volume of poems. One of these four in
his poem talks of tyranny falling at a moment's notice. Tyranny is not
in such a hurry. A 'voice of thunder' is to proclaim its doom. Alas, it
is the voice of steady intelligent purpose, much more difficult to
elicit, and not that of 'thunder,' which is to accomplish that. The poet
of course has a vision about the 'equal share' which the fall of tyranny
is to end in. The 'equal share' system would not last a day, as
everybody who reflects knows, and would give endless trouble to renew it
every morning."[C]

It is a striking characteristic of English Toryism, that it gives way
just in time. Every reform has hitherto been granted as it was on the
point of being extorted. Official carriages roll over the very spot
where Charles I. dropped his self-willed head; Lady Macbeth might wash
her hands as soon as the English people their memories of the civil
bloodstain. Toryism knows one thing well: that no water-pipes can be
made strong enough to withstand the sudden stoppage of a long column of
water. They will burst and overflow. No matter what material may be in
motion, if the motion be suddenly arrested, heat, in a direct ratio to
the motion, is developed. A decided popular tendency will never be
peremptorily stopped in England.

It is therefore a grand sight to an American, when the well-appointed
companies of London riflemen march up Fleet Street and the Strand,
through Temple-Bar, that bars nothing any longer, and stands there a
decaying symbol of Toryism itself. The brass bands may play, "Britannia
rules the Waves," or "God save the Queen," but to the Am