"Yes, Mr. Chairman, I oppose."

The most effective fact in oratory is an unexpected change in the
voice. Mr. Gabriel Syme evidently understood oratory. Having said
these first formal words in a moderated tone and with a brief
simplicity, he made his next word ring and volley in the vault as
if one of the guns had gone off.

"Comrades!" he cried, in a voice that made every man jump out of
his boots, "have we come here for this? Do we live underground like
rats in order to listen to talk like this? This is talk we might
listen to while eating buns at a Sunday School treat. Do we line
these walls with weapons and bar that door with death lest anyone
should come and hear Comrade Gregory saying to us, 'Be good, and
you will be happy,' 'Honesty is the best policy,' and 'Virtue is
its own reward'? There was not a word in Comrade Gregory's address
to which a curate could not have listened with pleasure (hear,
hear). But I am not a curate (loud cheers), and I did not listen to
it with pleasure (renewed cheers). The man who is fitted to make a
good curate is not fitted to make a resolute, forcible, and
efficient Thursday (hear, hear)."

"Comrade Gregory has told us, in only too apologetic a tone, that
we are not the enemies of society. But I say that we are the
enemies of society, and so much the worse for society. We are the
enemies of society, for society is the enemy of humanity, its
oldest and its most pitiless enemy (hear, hear). Comrade Gregory
has told us (apologetically again) that we are not murderers. There
I agree. We are not murderers, we are executioners (cheers)."