DEMOS AND THE GIG.
IT is most disheartening to see King Demos taking to all the bad ways of his predecessors. Not a, year passes but Englishmen censure or ridicule some foreign Government for prohibiting or interfering with some "demonstration" which, if let alone, would have passed off harmlessly, and have afforded a relief, however par- tial, to populardiscontent. Yet the moment the English Demos is displeased with a demonstration he imitates the foreign Sovereigns, denies the right of malcontents to be heard, and breaks up their demonstrations by sheer force. We have not, as our readers know, the smallest sympathy with those who called the meeting in Trafalgar Square on Sunday to protest against war with the Boers, and hold all Governments in succession wrong for permitting meet- ings which might easily become riotous, to be held out of doors in the centre of a capital in which twelve hours of disorder would cost millions and derange the business of the whole world. But if meetings are allowed in a place like Trafalgar Square Demos has no right to break them up and silence their speakers with eggs, apples, and it is said more dangerous missiles, just because he disapproves of their particular purpose. If Demos is not to be bound by those laws of fair play which are really part of the moral law, and a most useful part too, the quicker he is dethroned the better. There was no reason whatever why the persons who wished to protest against any war with the Transvaal should not have permission to utter their opinions. They were not eminent persons, and their opinion was an unwise one, but they had a right to be heard by any who chose to listen. The very basis of our freedom is that ordinary people have a right to say what they will, within the limits fixed by loyalty and decency, with- out being reduced to silence by physical force. That right was refused to them by the majority of those present in Trafalgar Square, and as it was refused they were as much oppressed as if they had been citizens of Milan or Belgrade. The fact that the oppressor is many- headed makes no difference, or rather makes the oppression worse, because the many-headed King always claims for himself the precise right which he refused to his opponents. If Dr. Clark and the rest had been on the popular side not an egg would have been thrown or a head battered. It is this side of the matter, the clear infringement of a clear political right, which some of our contemporaries do not appear to see. They would see it fast enough if Government without warning sent policemen with batons to disperse a public meeting of which they approved ; and whence does the crowd derive privileges which are so angrily refused to the authorities ? No blood was shed, it is true, but if the crowds had been equal in magnitude blood would have been shed ; and besides, that is not the test of tyranny. Men's rights are infringed every day without life being taken, and the Cossack police when they disperse assemblages in Russia never take life except by accident.' They only cut your skin to ribbons with their whips. To say, as has been said, that the speakers, had they been audible, would have given aid and comfort to the enemy is only to say that no Englishman is openly to disapprove a war even before it is begun. What sort of freedom is that—not to speak of government by deliberation? Or who gave a casual crowd of Londoners the right to declare that the right time had arrived for suspending the Constitution ?
We are pleased to know, though we did not doubt, that London as a whole approves the conduct of the Government in the Transvaal affair ; believes, that is, that the Ministry have displayed the right mixture of patience and firmness ; but we confess that we regard the scene of Sunday with something like dismay. The tone of the crowd was a great deal too like the tone of the crowds which shouted "A Berlin." If there is an under- taking which should be entered on in a spirit of grave reluctance and from a dominant sense of its necessity it is a war, and especially a war which has not been pro- duced by any invasion of our own territory, or any menace to our own safety. On such occasions we can accept, or even welcome, a fierce outburst, even though temper mingles with patriotism in the popular defiance. But on this occasion we are about to sacrifice many good lives in order that some of our countrymen abroad should be no longer oppressed, and that our claim to be supreme in South Africa should no longer be denied ; and we should act with something of the gravity and reluctance with which a great Court passes a heavy sentence. It is no time for the galleries to exult, still less for them to shout for a hostile verdict. They should wait for the end, and then if sen- tence is passed do their utmost to help in carrying it out without passion as without flinching. The crowd have, of course, a right to their opinion. They could have ex- pressed it on Sunday by voting down the resolution, or by expressing in the regular way their disapproval of the speakers, or by holding a counter demonstration of their own in far greater numbers. But to silence their oppo- nents, to call them traitors, to endanger their personal safety, was the part of Frenchmen, not of Englishmen, who, as a rule, with admirable self-restraint, leave foreign politics to those who understand them, and hardly demand even of their representatives public discussion on issues so complicated and so grave. To support or oppose the Government is right enough, but Government can be opposed or supported without riotous demonstrations in the streets, without giving way to mere passion, above all without silencing opponents by physical force. All men knew that the Government was supported in its resolve about Fashoda, but London awaited the issue of negotia- tions as if they had been about a case of extradition. If the man in the street is to decree peace or war we may some day have a crowd threatening Ministers because they have avoided a campaign, or because they have accepted a challenge which it would be dishonourable or impossible to avoid. We are not of those, be it understood, who would prohibit all "demonstrations" because they can never be truly deliberative, and would confine all popular meetings to buildings with a roof to them. The building is essential if the end is to enable an orator to convince by argument, but there are occasions when the end is not that, but to make an impact on rulers' minds, when the mighty mass of the assemblage is of itself the heaviest of arguments. There are no great grievances left ; but when they were rampant, as before the Reform Bill, huge outdoor meetings brought home to Ministers, as no meetings within walls could have done, that the real nation was turning against them, and that they must at all events listen to its cry. Such demonstrations convey as nothing else can the protest of the inarticulate, and we should grieve to see them pro- hibited; but they are chiefly of value for the removal of grievances, and are singularly inapplicable to war, which should never be declared or evaded except on the counsel of the experienced and the wise. A popular shout for war is almost invariably the product of unreasoning emotion, and is often the presage of great disasters; while a popular shout against war in a time like the present, when rulers shrink from its responsibilities, is usually the result of sheer ignorance of facts, and want of imagination to perceive their drift. The fewer of such demonstrations the better, but in all cases let them be calm, as conveying the opinion of men who intend to be just, and who know that a battle is not a game of football or of polo. Even the Afridis decide on war or peace "in council," and leave to each man who attends the right to utter the most unpopular opinion. Londoners meant no harm on Sunday, for they did not think ; but they were really doing their best to make grave deliberation on the necessity for the war nearly impossible. If their repre- sentatives were to behave as they did, deliberation would be a farce, and Ministers would declare war or make peace after a mere counting of heads. It is most improbable that any of the speakers on the platforms on Sunday had anything to say of the smallest moment, but who is to know that when every counsellor's mouth was choked by an apple or an egg?
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