London, usually so tranquil, has been excited and alarmed this
week by a most serious riot. A meeting of the unemployed had been called on Monday, in Trafalgar Square, and was largely attended by decent poor men, chiefly builders, who are thrown out of work by the long-continued frost. They ought not to be hungry ; but they do not save, and they are. Their leaders harangued in the usual way, pleading first of all for work, but also for what are known as " Fair-trade " principles ; but the platforms were stormed by another body, known as the " Revolutionary Social Democratic League," a small society of violent Socialistic principles. Their leaders indulged in violent speeches, Mr. Hyndman declaring that if the multitude would follow he would lead, and that five hundred determined men would soon make a change ; Mr. Burns telling his hearers that in France "capitalists' heads decorated the lamp- posts," and that the League " would not shrink from revolution ;" Mr. Champion insisting that the people must bring home re- sponsibility in a practical way to those who made it impossible to pass legislation for them ; and Mr. Williams saying the wanters were many and the wealthy few, and if the former organised themselves, "the wealth of the many would change hands." So it would, for it would go to the soldiers. The un- employed workmen departed quietly home, but the Socialist crowd, aided by a throng of roughs and criminals, made a rush on property, stoning the clubs in Pall Mall, breaking the shop-windows in Piccadilly, and wreaking shops in South Audley Street, and Oxford Street from the Circus to the Marble Arch. No one was killed, but several shops were plundered, a really large amount of wilful damage was done, and an alarm was spread through London that the West End was in the hands of the mob, which was more true than was imagined. If the mob had known, the West End might have been sacked.
