Mr. Bentinck invoked the opinion of the Government yesterday week,
on the question whether a certain meeting held to foster the growth of Republican feeling, in the Wellington Music Hall, on Wednesday, the 22nd March, had not passed a seditious resolution, whose supporters ought to be prosecuted by the Crown. Mr. Gladstone, professing complete ignorance of the meeting, declared it to be the policy of the Government to trust to the good sense of the people for the repression "of wrong and foolish opinions," and to avoid giving them that importance which a public prosecu- tion would, of course, imply. Of course, that is the common- sense of the matter. Indeed the attempt to punish the enuncia- tion of theoretical republicanism would probably do more than anything in the world to foster the growth of a practical republi- canism. Foolish or not, the preference for a Republic is clearly not a " wrong " opinion. Even a prosecution for professions of Deism or Atheism would hardly excite more disgust than a. prosecution for professions of republicanism unaccompanied by- any effort to resist authority or defy the administration of the- law.
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