A meeting of the Radicals had been announced and placarded over the city,
inviting all workingmen to be present and enter their protest against
Parliament appropriating any money to the Prince of Wales for defraying
the expenses of his contemplated trip to India. The novelty of seeing a
political meeting on _Sunday_, and that too on the part of the Republicans
in monarchial England, was enough to entice me thither, so I went early
and spent an hour with a silver-haired clergyman, upon a settee under the
shade of a tree not far from "The Reform Tree," around which, as this
gentleman informed me, the nucleus of Radical meetings is always formed.
On my way to the park, I was accompanied for some distance by a certain
policeman, (whose acquaintance I had formed during the week); to him I
expressed my surprise at seeing Great Britain compromise the sacredness of
the Sabbath with radical Republicanism and Rationalism! "Well," said he,
"If we let them have their own way, they will come here and hold their
meetings and after they have listened to their leaders awhile and cheered
right lustily, they will scatter and that is the end of it, but when we
interfere, there is no telling where the matter will end. In 1866, we once
closed the park against them, and the consequence was a riot in which the
police suffered severely from brick-bats, and the mob finally took hold of
the iron fence and tore it away for a long distance along the park, made
their entry, and took their own way." "Well could you not have punished
those offenders according to due process of law?" I asked. "Yes," he
rejoined, "we might, but their number was so great that we could never
have finished trying them all!" Thus it often happens that what is
criminal for one or several to do, goes unpunished when a thousand offend,
and besides they open the way to new privileges and greater liberties.

At 3:00 o'clock a mighty flood of the Reform Party, headed by Bradlaugh
and Watts, marched into the park and, soon a large meeting of many
thousands was formed, which increased in numbers as long as the speakers