The riot threatening to continue, Mr. Walpole sent for the
managers of the League, to see if he could not come to some arrangement with them, and after a scene, described in another column—with Mr. Walpole overpowered by emotion, Mr. Betties severely didactic, and Colonel Dickson minatory—Mr. Walpole in a curiously involved speech thanked Mr. Beales, promised to offer every facility for a legal decision on the public right to Hyde Park, and sent the managers away, apparently amazed to find that Mr. Walpole, one of the kindliest natures alive, and said to be the original of Mr. Aubrey in the once celebrated story Ten Thousand a Year, was not an ogre. Mr. Beales, however, returned, and asked permission to hold one meeting in Hyde Park, to which Mr. Walpole returned that he must consult his colleagues, and the application had better be made in writing. Mr. Beales thereupon took upon himself to issue a placard stating that Mr. Walpole had. consented to the meeting, a placard which was believed all over Loudon, and brought down on innocent Mr. Walpole a rattling shower of sarcasms. The statement was of course promptly con- tradicted, and Government, deciding to prohibit the meeting, called for special constables. Mr. Beales thereupon bethought himself that his individual folly might be an occasion of slaughter, and the League, who want Reform, not a riot, resolved to abandon the project of a meeting in Hyde Park. So the matter rests, leaving in impartial minds the conclusion that Mr. Walpole is weak, Sir Richard Mayne an old soldier, the British " rough " no politician, and Mr. Beales a goose.
