The attack on Sir Charles Dilke's meeting at Bolton has
ended in the death of one of the persona wounded (William Schofield), and a verdict of manslaughter against some person or persons un- known has been given. 'to this we might have had to add a catas- trophe quite as serious at Reading, where Mr. Odger was set upon in most cowardly fashion at the railway station, and beaten and wounded by a party of roughs,—Mr. Odger estimates them at 300,—though he was accompanied by only six friends, and none of them at first appeared, Mr. Odger entering the station, after his Republican lecture, alone. Mr. Odger remarks very fairly that when Lord Elcho wanted to be allowed to explain his supposed vilification of the working-class, he was listened to at St. Martin's Hall with respectful attention, instead of being thus mobbed and wounded. That is quite true ; but Mr. Alger must not forget the discredit- able attack by his own party (of course without authority from himself) on the Chelsea Conservative meeting, which was, we believe, the first of these disgraceful uproars. That is, of course,. DO excuse, only at most a very slight palliation of the attack at Bolton, and the much more cowardly one at Reading, where the roughs actually waited till most of Mr. Odger's friends had dis- persed, thinking all safe, before they set upon him. The ballot,— as we have always preached,—will be of little use if it only shelters the voter, and rowdyism grows so fast that the speaker,. the man who makes the voter, is to be silenced by bludgeons and stones.
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