There is to be an open air meeting next Sunday
in Hyde Park, to express sympathy with the French Republican party, and pro- test against the extradition of M. Gustave Flourens. A great crowd will be gathered, many violent speeches will be made, and next day the police charges for the district will be doubled in number, without any good being effected for any person or any cause. M. Gustave Flourens may be worthy of any amount of sympathy, and the French Republican party contains noble names; but nobody is asking M. Flourens' extradition, and the French Republic will come without help from the sympathy of Londoners, who do not know what a Republic is. It is a little wearisome, all this, and all the more so because the whole difficulty arises from distrust of the House of Commons. Let Parliament pass an Act prohibiting public meetings in London altogether except under cover, or with the previous assent of the Home Secretary. Argument can only be heard in a room, and whenever a mass demonstration is advisable,—a rare case with household suffrage— the Home Secretary may be compelled by the House to grant it. Why, with a household suffrage, should we go on distrusting our own agents ? In other great cities, mass meetings do no injury, but in London they are threats to Parliament.
Previous page
