4 MAY 1867, Page 6

THE PROPOSED DEMONSTRATION IN HYDE PARK.

THE Reform League seem bent on a betise. Are these men or children who want to go into the Park just because somebody says they shan't, and that somebody a Secretary of State, whose conduct may be censured and who may be removed by Parliament, if he is doing what is wrong and illegal ? There is no doubt such a thing as heroic political martyrdom in a good cause, but a sillier occasion for martyrdom than this no political body ever discovered, or rather invented. If a child with a great play-room insists on romping in the drawing-room against orders, nobody doubts that such a child should be " chastened " by its parents, though great allowances are made for the natural spirit of resistance against lawful authority in the young. But here are a set of men who are eager to prove their conviction that the people ought to rule, and the way they take to do so is to try and break down by violence the authority which is at present the only authority sanctioned by the people for the disposal of our public parks. Legally, no one has any doubt,—Mr. Beaks himself, in his letter to Thursday's Telegraph, shows that even he has no doubt,—that the Home Secretary has full autho- rity to prohibit political meetings and speeches in Hyde Park. If the Reform League object to that exercise of authority, they can move Parliament to call him to account. If they think that the present Parliament is too prejudiced a body to call him to account, they can press forward the legitimate agitation for a Reformed Parliament, which might perhaps allow political meetings in Hyde Park. But to insist on illegal meetings in Hyde Park, while Primrose Hill is open to them for the purpose of speaking, and the streets of London for the purpose of demonstration, on the ground that they can nowhere else give such an effective impulse to Reform, is to make the slightest and most trivial of accidental advantages in the place of meeting, the occasion for showing that the people who want this great change in the Constitution have no respect for the authority of Law as it now exists. Everybody knows that whether the Reform League meets on Primrose Hill or in Hyde Park, its numbers and the weight of its adherents will be the only matters affecting the political significance of the demonstration. Whether the people meet in Hyde Park or on Primrose Hill cannot by any possibility alter even for an hour the future of Reform,—except, indeed, that this obstinacy may alarm some of the most earnest friends of Reform, and convince them of that which they have hitherto steadily disbelieved, that the ordinary householders of the greatest city in England are disposed to impose illegally and violently their own arbitrary will on a responsible Parliamentary officer, duly in- vested by the Constitution with power to decide this matter. We can imagine at least good Reformers frightened into reaction by a silly and violent resistance to the law in Hyde Park on Monday next. We cannot imagine a single reactionary converted to the cause of Reform by seeing the pertinacious- obstinacy of his fellow-countrymen about a point of no import- ance whatever, except as it affects the respect or contempt of Englishmen for the law. Mr. Bradlaugh, in his usual foolish and intemperate style, told the meeting on Wednesday that If the Government resisted forcibly the meeting in Hyde Park, " out of this meeting would come more than out of months of Parliamentary debating," in which we agree with him, but scarcely as to the kind of result which he anticipates. If Reformers show themselves so stupid as to persevere in doing what they would not care to do at all if it had not been specially and legally forbidden, the teal of many, which is warm enough now, may wag cold in consequence_ Thiswill be almost the first time that Englishmen will have professed to see a principle in breaking law which is not new and not tyrannical, which has till now been regarded as beneficial to the public interest, and which can easily be changed in the proper way, if it appears on discussion to be- oppressive and hostile to the public interest. The question of whether Mr. Walpole's prohibition is in itself reasonable is quite another matter. Anybody might fairly- hold that he is foolish in resisting this political assembly in Hyde Park, who yet held that as he had prohibited it, it was. the part of all good citizens to acquiesce, and to call him to account, if at all, by legal means. It cannot be denied that there has been a good deal of shilly-shally in the policy of the Government in this matter. First, they resisted these meetings, then they acquiesced, then they winked at a number of such meetings,—there was one only on Good Friday,—and now they are going back to their old policy of positive pro hibition. However, it may perhaps be said in excuse for Mr- Walpole, that while this sort of thing may be very objec- tionable as a practice, and would be likely, if habitually sanctioned, to turn the park into a place where social enjoy- ment and quiet amusement are impossible,—still, that it is not desirable to make too much fuss about it, or to insist very scru- pulously on the right of the Government to interfere, in the case of meetings held at rare intervals and in an orderly and tranquil fashion. All that is needful, he may contend, is to- oppose habitual meeting in the Park, and to resist the growth of any precedent in favour of the right of meeting. But if great demonstrations, called by public circular, like that for Monday, are to be repeatedly permitted, there can be no doubt that both the habit and the right will soon be established, and that the attempt of any future Government to dispute the latter would be a very dangerous one. Some such defence as this might, we think, be made for Mr. Walpole, for interfering so decisively now, in spite of the tacit sanction he has given to so many smaller meetings since the great disaster of last year. This meet- ing is to be a great one. It has been formally summoned. The language used by some of the Reform League as to the absolute legal right of the people to hold it has'been very strong and very misleading. If after the use of such language Government had acquiesced, judgment would have been confessed in favour of the right. If Hyde Park is not to become a regular place for open-air political meetings, it is time to contest them. Even if the Ministry has been vacillating, if it is not to give up all control of the Park in the interest of the public, now is the time to interfere. We confess that, on the whole, we incline to the belief that the present rule reserving the Park for the social enjoyment of the public is the best, though that is a matter bf no moment compared with the far greater import- ance of supporting the legal authority in any decision it may come to upon the matter.

So far from conveying the impression that the agitators are really anxious about Reform, this disposition of theirs to quarrel about the .patticular place in which they shall express their opiniolis, will carry the exactly opposite impression into the mind of the nation. People who are really in earnest,—and earnest, ?moreover, about a cause in which they have every prospect of success,—are not likely to fall to wrangling about a trifle not even distantly connected with the matter in hand. Politicians really in earnest, if they cannot meet in a convenient place, meet in an inconvenient place ; they are thinking too much of the meeting and its objects, to care about the accidental cir- cumstances. A man who is riding for life and death will not waste time and energy by cavilling about the merely showy properties of the horse offered him. No Member who cares about his motion would withdraw it because he could not secure the exact place from which he liked best to address the House. All these bickerings about the Park are signs not of earnestness, but of frivolity in the cause of Reform. We are persuaded that the mass of the people care nothing about the question of place—much about the demonstration to be made there. It is only one or two vain leaders, like Mr. Bradlaugh, in their ardour to exalt their own horns as sticklers for popular privileges and democratic rights, who seize on this petty question and wish to make popularity out of it. They will not succeed. The majority of all true Re- formers will see at once that strict obedience to the law is of even more importance in those who wish to secure a great alteration of the law, than in those who are agitating on the Conservative side. No one will persuade the people that the authority of future laws is safe in Reformers' hands, who do not evince sincere respect fox the authority of the existing laws, even while they criticize their deficiencies.