Sir Redvers Buller's honourable refusal to 'Sanction the exploiting of
his case for party purposes entirely knocked the bottom out of the Hyde Park demonstration on the following day. . A procession estimated at from five to ten thousand people, in which the various lodges of the Total Abstinent Sons of the Phmnix were prominently represented, marched with banners and a band from the Embankment to Hyde Park, where speeches were delivered from four plat- forms to a. crowd variously estimated at from twenty-five to one hundred thousand persons. The principal speakers were Mr. Steadman, L.C.C., and Mr. Havelock Wilson, but Parliament was unrepresented; save by letters of excuse. - -It. would he idle to- deny that the attitude of the audience was one of genuine adrisiration for. Sir Redvers Buller; it would be equally idle to affirm that the meeting in any way represented the solid or thinking elements of the middle or the working class, or that it indicated any deep. rooted' resentinerit against the Government.. The temper of the majority present was not savage but good humoured; there was certainly nothing to warrant the issue of the extraordinaay leaflet, printed in broken English of a strong Teutonic flavour, which deprecated violence in the don't-nail- hie-ear-to-the-pump style. Indeed, the mind of the crowd seemed somewhat like that of the mobs which used to support the Claimant. They cared nothing for and knew nothing of the merits of the case, but they were not going to see a man put upon or kept out of his rights.
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