The meeting of the Hyde Park conspirators on Wednesday, in
Sussex Hall, Bouverie Street, was somewhat unpleasantly inter- rupted during an oration of Mr. Bradlaugh's by the appearance of Chief Superintendent Walker, Superintendent Durkin, and Superintendent Kitte, of the Metropolitan Police Force. Mr. Bradlaugh, who had just got to " Great peril in defending that Night," when the meeting was electrified by these apparitions in uniform,—everybody felt first guilty, and then heroic,—rose to -the occasion. He " said the first effort made against the public liberty would find an echo from one end of England to another— an echo that would sound in Manchester and ring in Birmingham, and would bring some hundreds of thousands in the provinces to help their brethren in London, if help were necessary." That is very fine, especially the distinction between the Birmingham echo of the " effort made against public liberty," which, Birmingham being a place of metallic manufactures, is to "ring," and the Manchester echo of the same, which is only,—being muffled, we suppose, by cotton bags,—to "sound." Can any one believe that these are reasonable beings, who, having all the world open to their demonstrations, talk as if the oppressor, with " that red gaze that flashes desolation," had his foot upon their necks, because the Park is kept quiet for the amusement of nursemaids and other loungers? What would they say if the lovers of amusement insisted on bringing their bands and their frivolities to interrupt . a political meeting on Primrose Hill ? And if they would resent that, why should they demand for political meetings, in exalted language, as if it were the first of human rights, admission to a place set apart at present for social enjoyments?
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