THE POLICE AND THE SOCIALISTS.
THE police, like fire, are good servants but bad masters. When they are protecting our property from disappear- ance or our persons from violence, they are doing their proper work, and, on the whole, they do it well. But when they are employed to interfere with the expression of opinion, they are doing what is not their proper work, and they do it very badly. An organised police crusade has, it would appear, been going on for some time against the Socialist open-air meetings which have taken place at the East-End. Last Sunday, in consequence of these proceedings, a large meeting was held in Dod Street, Burdett Road, Limehouse. A procession with band and banners marched to the corner of the street, when it came to a stand, and several persons from a brake addressed the meeting, consisting of some 800 to 1,000 persons. Dod Street is a small street, consisting almost entirely of warehouses ; and on Sunday there is abso- lutely no traffic, and apparently no passengers. No one was, therefore, incommoded by the meeting. What may have been said at the meeting does not transpire ; but if what was said was blasphemous, indecent, or even treasonable or seditious, it was indictable as such. No allegation to that effect, however, was made. It does not even appear that the meeting in general, or any individual person forming part of it, was told to " move on." Yet the police chose to endeavour to press through the crowd for the purpose of arresting the speakers. As to what then happened there was some conflict of evidence at the police-court. The police alleged that one Lyons and other persons whom they arrested forcibly tried to prevent the police passing through the crowd, and kicked and otherwise assaulted them. The persons arrested denied having used violence, and independent evidence was adduced in their sup- port. As the meeting was held for the express purpose of testing the right of meeting in that place, it certainly seems improbable that any violence was used. But whether violence was used or not is really irrelevant. The persons arrested were charged with resisting the police in the execution of their duty. If the police were not in the execution of their duty, but exceeding their duty, when they tried to arrest the speakers, then the persons arrested were perfectly justified in using any necessary force to prevent their own arrest, or even that of their friends. It is true that one of the speakers was subsequently charged with creating an obstruction in the streets, and subsequently found by Mr. Saunders to have created one, and fined accord- ingly. But this finding of the Magistrate was entirely un- supported by any independent evidence. Not a single individual could be found to say he had been obstructed. According to the Pall Mall Gazette, which had a representative present, the only person who could have felt the damage of obstruction was the keeper of a public-house at the corner of the street, who had promised to raise no objection if the meeting was over by one o'clock, before which hour he could not legally open his premises ; and the meeting was over by one o'clock. But Mr. Saunders, the Magistrate, took a view of the case which one would rather have expected from a country J.P. He sentenced one man to two months' bard labour for an alleged kick on a constable's leg of which no sign was to be seen next day, and from which the con- stable admitted he had suffered not the smallest incon- venience. The rest were fined forty shillings or a month's imprisonment, not because any one had suffered from the alleged obstruction, which at the time of sentence had not been alleged, much less proved, but because " the meeting was called by bills, one of which he held in his hand, and "—it was not given in evidence, seemingly, or read in Court—" a more scurrilous thing he had never
seen Two of the prisoners were foreigners. What on earth they had to do with this sort of excitement, he did not know. Apparently, they came from Germany for the pur- pose of getting a living," which the worthy Magistrate seems to think is itself a crime. " They might be Socialists ; but he thought they might leave the question of Socialism in England in Germany ; but the German banner-bearer, like the rest, will have to do his month's imprisonment. He was nearly having an illustrious companion. William DEMOCRATIC FINANCE.
Salvation Army, and the Good Templars, and the admirers of the liabilities of France. They have plunged into Mrs. Weldon are allowed to processionize and to obstruct Expeditions, Public Works, Military Reforms, Educational the streets to their hearts' content without molestation, Reforms, and extravagance generally, until in 1885 the it is persecution, coupled with hypocrisy, to prosecute corrected deficit, to be added, of course, to the Debt, the holders of a Socialist meeting for the same thing. Mr. was £11,410,000 ; and the Budget of 1886 showed an Saunders told the men that if they wanted to speak they expenditure, sure to be exceeded, exceeding £150,000,000. .must speak on private grounds or in a building. But to tell Much of this expenditure, which transcends all European pre- men, whose complaint is that they are starving, to go and cedent, and actually exceeds £25, or the maintenance of a hire a private ground or hall to talk in, is as cruel as it is family, for each house in France, is, of course, met by loans ; impertinent. However, it is doubtful whether a building of but the sum raised by taxation is more than £122,000,000 the requisite dimensions could be found in the neighbourhood. a year, or £20 a house throughout the country. This One of the men said that the only covered places they could expenditure, moreover, cannot be reduced, for the Trea- meet in were the publics ; but the police had hunted them sury, influenced partly by the ideas of M. de Freycinet from public to public, and broken into their clubs, and any- on the subject of public works, and partly by a fancy that how a public-house is not a very convenient place of assembly France was too rich to feel any burden incurred with a wise for a thousand people. It is true they can go and meet in a object, has entered into obligations so numerous, that while park ; but it is rather hard on people if they are to be com- the present indebtedness of France is £788,880,000, her pelled to walk several miles to a park to discuss their grievances. prospective indebtedness under contracts is no less than So long as the meeting does not cause a nuisance to the £1,435,000,000, or, say, in round numbers, double the English neighbourhood, or obstruct the street, and interfere with traffic, Debt. Much of this money will be profitably spent, and much a street is as good a place to meet in as any other. Technically is counterbalanced by the arrangements which will gradually speaking, no doubt merely for two men to stand still in the make important public works the property of the State ; but, streets and talk for five minutes, is more than they have a speaking broadly, the Debt of France has been tripled, partly right to do. The legal theory of the right of the public in a by misfortune and partly by extravagance, since Napoleon fell. highway is simply a perpetual "move on." It is a place of If this were all, the only cause for alarm would be lest the transit, not of transactions. But a wise police would not people should ultimately detest the Government which mulcted interfere with any assemblage of persons which was reasonably them so severely. It is probable that English economists, orderly, and was doing no harm. Nor, we are sure, would the misled by a tradition, have greatly underrated the proportion police have interfered except under orders. The Chief Com- of its earnings which a nation would consent to sacrifice to missioner is, unfortunately, a Tory ; but he would hardly have the State, the American example showing that even savage directed a persecution of this sort without the sanction of his taxation voted by universal suffrage will be borne with strange superiors. It is impossible not to feel that no such perseca- submissiveness. France, in particular, is so rich in natural tion would have taken place in June last. No Liberal Home products, in the marvellous thrift of her people, and in Secretary would have tried to gag the expression of opinions, the perfection of her organisation—which, for example, however erroneous, or of grievances, however exaggerated. draws to the Treasury the whole sum paid in Eng- This imitation of the police of Paris or Berlin is the work of land for conveyancing, and a great part of the sum Tory reaction, but of Tories a little off their heads. For in paid as rent—that she can probably bear an expendi- view of Lord Carnarvon's performances in Ireland, such police ture greater than that of any country in Europe ; but action in England is not exactly consistent. there is no sign whatever of coming economy. The statesmen The Home Secretary will do well to conform to the example are becoming frightened, it is true, and economists are at last of the Lord-Lieutenant, and direct his subordinates to abate speaking out ; but the Chamber is not alarmed at all, and the their ardour. We simply cannot afford to have the streets of constituencies are as clamorous for expenditure as ever. The London made the theatres of the scenes of riot and bloodshed country would not bear a reduced expenditure on the Army, which the stupid policy of repression produces in Paris when- it asks every year for new Civil outlay, and it hails with delight ever there is a public meeting, or even a burial. If the expenditure for public works from which Great Britain—sup- Socialists take to the streets for purposes of violence, we should posed, though probably falsely, to be much the richer country- to English people. If they wanted to preach Socialism, let them know how to deal with them. But when an assemblage of go back to Germany to preach it. They were clearly guilty of Englishmen, or Germane either for that matter, simply meet obstructing the police. One of them went so far as to carry a to discuss their grievances,—or, in other words, to exercise
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