SUPPRESSION OF THE GUY FAWKES NUISANCE. THERE is one easy
service that the present Government might do—put down the low ceremony which still disgraces our streets on the Fifth of November. Annual ceremonies, as a class, are gene- rally respectable : we would preserve old customs for the sake of their commemorating the habits and feelings of our forefathers, so that, however differing with those venerable personages in con- clusions, we may yet share some sympathy with them ; a grateful memory repaying their kindly forethought. But of all annual ceremonies this is one of the least respectable: it does not immor- talize the habits and feelings of our forefathers, but a feud ; it does not even commemorate the better success of the victors in that contest, but the malignity which then prevailed on both sides ; for if our King and Parliament were threatened, how many Po- pish recusants suffered the most cruel persecution. Why should we yearly exult over the mistake and fate of that perverted Mutius Sceevola of the Papists, poor Guido Fawkes I- whose trembling signature might remind us that in his day even Protestants had not forgotten to use the rack. If we carry about "Old Guy " to revile that impersonation of the Roman Catholic conspirators, let us also bear with him some sign of shame for the sins of Protestant intolerance. Better still to bury in oblivion those baser feelings which tarnished the zeal of both parties, and to remember only the more abiding energies and more generous sympathies which have survived in the children of both. Let us Commemorate whatever we may of the positive virtues and noble deeds of England's children, of whatsoever faith—Magna Charta
was won for us by Roman Catholics—but not their mistakes and defeats.
This annual ceremony of the streets would not have survived but for the vested interests engaged in its maintenance. They are not, however, of a kind to be respected or feared. The most directly pledged to the support of the institution is the numerous but only-to-beadles -and-apple-stall-women -formidable black- guard-boy interest: to the members of that order the institution is valuable for its fun, its fireworks, and its pence. Another order supposes itself to have an indirect interest in the institution, the ultra-sectarian or extreme section of the Exeter Hall interest.
But neither of those interests, formidable as they may be to the feebler classes, can justify the survival of what is really a nui- sance. The fireworks are the least disagreeable or mischievous part of the business. That civic scarecrow Old Guy" is a mass of squalid contagion, which ought to be condemned by the Board of Health, as a portable depository of typhoids. The crowding of blackguard boys is an obstruction to the streets, of a revolting kind—a depraved form of childish hilarity, issuing from squalor and trading on bigotry. The money, collected on a bad pretext, is a fund for juvenile debauchery. And the words which the little ragamuffins have licence to utter are a brutal ribaldry, unfit for the ear of woman or child. The nuisance is an outrage to de- cency and an opprobrium to our police regulations. It might be suppressed at once—by a simple order from the Police. The Home Secretary, we believe, could do it with a stroke of his pen. If he is very much afraid of the ultra Exeter- Hall influence, he may gather heart in reflecting that November is a long way from May. But he could encounter no serious opposition or objection. The nuisance is too vile in itself to be defended ; and if any kind of meaning were imparted to the step beyond the simple abolition of a street nuisance, it would be too mild and gentle an act of grace towards a section of our fellow citizens not to find vindicators in every circle.
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