So the charge of nepotism against the chief magistrate was weak.  But no matter; weak or strong, it suited Stavely.  Stavely was immediately elected to the vacant magistracy, and, oozing reform from every pore, he went vigorously to work.  In no long time religious services raged everywhere and unceasingly.  By command, the second prayer of the Sunday morning service, which had customarily endured some thirty-five or forty minutes, and had pleaded for the world, first by continent and then by national and tribal detail, was extended to an hour and a half, and made to include supplications in behalf of the possible peoples in the several planets.  Everybody was pleased with this; everybody said, “Now this is something like.”  By command, the usual three-hour sermons were doubled in length.  The nation came in a body to testify their gratitude to the new magistrate.  The old law forbidding cooking on the Sabbath was extended to the prohibition of eating, also.  By command, Sunday-school was privileged to spread over into the week.  The joy of all classes was complete.  In one short month the new magistrate had become the people’s idol!

The time was ripe for this man’s next move.  He began, cautiously at first, to poison the public mind against England.  He took the chief citizens aside, one by one, and conversed with them on this topic.  Presently he grew bolder, and spoke out.  He said the nation owed it to itself, to its honor, to its great traditions, to rise in its might and throw off “this galling English yoke.”

But the simple islanders answered: 

“We had not noticed that it galled.  How does it gall?  England sends a ship once in three or four years to give us soap and clothing, and things which we sorely need and gratefully receive; but she never troubles us; she lets us go our own way.”

“She lets you go your own way!  So slaves have felt and spoken in all the ages!  This speech shows how fallen you are, how base, how brutalized you have become, under this grinding tyranny!  What! has all manly pride forsaken you?  Is liberty nothing?  Are you content to be a mere appendage to a foreign and hateful sovereignty, when you might rise up and take your rightful place in the august family of nations, great, free, enlightened, independent, the minion of no sceptered master, but the arbiter of your own destiny, and a voice and a power in decreeing the destinies of your sister-sovereignties of the world?”

Speeches like this produced an effect by and by.  Citizens began to feel the English yoke; they did not know exactly how or whereabouts they felt it, but they were perfectly certain they did feel it.  They got to grumbling a good deal, and chafing under their chains, and longing for relief and release.  They presently fell to hating the English flag, that sign and symbol of their nation’s degradation; they ceased to glance up at it as they passed the capitol, but averted their eyes and grated their teeth; and one morning, when it was found trampled into the mud at the foot of the staff, they left it there, and no man put his hand to it to hoist it again.  A certain thing which was sure to happen sooner or later happened now.  Some of the chief citizens went to the magistrate by night, and said: