Ebe %pectator
lune 30, 1866
Members of Parliament are as bad as actors, they cannot bear to be hissed. It has been a prac- lice during the past week for a crowd to collect in Palace Yard, and hoot or cheer the members as they pass in. The practice hurts nobody any more than the yells on election day, but Colonel Knox declares London in "a state of siege," angry letters appear in the Times, and the police have received orders to turn all persons not "respectable," i.e., not looking like income-tax payers, out of Palace Yard. Horseplay of this kind is neither pleasant nor seemly, and the police may fairly arrest any one who really obstructs a member's entry, but to expel a whole population from a public place because a few roughs choose to hoot is not the way to make people believe the difference between Whigs and Tories a mere matter of words.
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