England is lapsing into rowdyism. The other day Hackney' held
a rowdy meeting, and now Chelsea and Bolton have followed suit. On Tuesday, the anti-Republican constituents of Sir Charles Dilke at Chelsea tried to hold a ticket-meeting to oppose his Re- publican policy.. But the doors were forced by non-ticketholdera, a chairman of their own put into the chair, and a very tumultuous. and violent meeting held, which ended in one of the orators asking, in relation to Sir A. Slade and the other Conservative Chelseaitee„ " Where are these men ?" Whereupon the roughs tried to find them,. and tutnult and fighting ensued, ending in the adjournment of the meeting to the 14th of January. At Bolton, in the Temperance Hall, on Thursday, it was even worse. But here Sir C. Dilke and. his friends were the ticket-holders, and the Conservative mob the assailants, who sent brickbats through the windows and afterwards. swarmed into the hall. Sir Charles and his friends got out. unharmed, but there was afterwards a free fight among the roughs. "The reporters' table was thrown down and smashed into frag- ments, the pieces being used as cudgels,"—surely a symbolical act,— for public opinion ends where violence begins, and the Press itself ceases to have any function Jett, except to cry aloud and spare not against this overflow of political brutality.
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