The Saturday demonstration was still more painful. That a car
of children should have accompanied the procession to heighten the melodramatic effect is simply revolting. There are great disputes as to the actual numbers of the demon- stration. The Pall Mall estimates it at from 50,000 to 100,000. A. Liberal clergyman, who has taken great pains to count the numbers of popular demonstrations on several previous occasions, assures us that 20,000 is quite an outside number. Other authorities have suggested numbers as high as 150,000 and 200,000. The truth is that nothing is more difficult than to compute the numbers of a great crowd, and that it requires much experience to do so with any accuracy. The speeches at the various platforms were of very different characters, varying from one by a lady advocating the reintroduction of Lynch- law, to some of a character not unworthy of the painful subject, had such a demonstration been proper at all. A Middlesex Magistrate has reported that the crimes which the Criminal Law Amendment Act was passed to punish are rapidly increasing ; and Mr. :Simms, the philanthropist who raised the " bitter cry," declares that the agitation has excited the cupidity of a considerable number of wicked mothers. Such are the natural consequences of all this publicity. A friend writes to us :—" It is one of the marked facts of the New Testament,— alone among Scriptures,—that although it inculcates purity, and was written when the world was rotten with vice, it passes over all details of the question, and is not only modern, but modern Puritan, in its complete reticence." Is not that the model for Christians to imitate ?
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