furniture, three children sick of the small-pox
were thrown out of the window."

In the month of March, a hundred years ago,
in a struggle for the beer in cask that had been
furnished to the populace by the successful candidate
at a Westminster election, a party of sailors
quarrelled with some Irish chairmen, and, having
driven their adversaries from the field, broke up
all the chairs they could find, except one that
had been labelled "This belongs to English
chairmen." Two days afterwards, the fights were
renewed, and soldiers had to interfere. Again,
three days later, search was made by the peace-
officers, and a few women connected with the
offenders were being sent to Bridewell under
guard of a sergeant and twelve men, when they
were rescued in Chiswell-street and carried off in
triumph, after one man had been shot.

Here the law showed equal weakness and
injustice. Its weakness was in nothing more
conspicuous than in the extreme and vindictive
penalties for small offences. The mob argued in
its own way against the excessive use of capital
punishment. One night, for example, in the same
year, seventeen 'sixty-three, "all the gibbets in
the Edgeware-road, on which many malefactors
were hung in chains, were cut down by persons
unknown." Offenders liable to excessive penalty
were shielded by the people. As for pickpockets,
the mob usually took them out of the weak
hands of justice, and punished them with a
rough ducking. Even worse offenders it
was thought more humane to forgive than
kill. Still in this year seventeen 'sixty-three,
a century ago, we read in the Annual Register,
that "as soon as the execution of several
criminals, condemned at last sessions of the Old
Bailey, was over at Tyburn, the body of Cornelius
Sanders, executed for stealing about fifty pounds
out of the house of Mr. White, in Lamb-street,
Spitalfields, was carried and laid before his
door; where great numbers of people assembling,
they at last grew so outrageous that a guard of
soldiers was sent for to stop their proceedings:
notwithstanding which, they forced open the
door, fetched out all the salmon-tubs, most of
the household furniture, piled them on a heap,
and set fire to them; and to prevent the Guards
from extinguishing the flames, pelted them off
with stones, and would not disperse till the
whole was consumed." This terrible idea of
literally laying the dead man at the door of the
person who seemed to have procured the
unequal punishment, was then in fashion with the
mob. In the following May, says the Annual
Register, "the criminal condemned for returning
from transportation, and afterwards executed,
addressed himself to the populace at Tyburn,
and told them he could wish they would carry
his body and lay it at the door of Mr. Parker, a
butcher, in the Minories, who, it seems, was the
principal evidence against him; which being
accordingly done, the mob behaved so riotously
before the man's house, it was no easy matter to
disperse them."

The history of the mobility in this country is
full of outside changes, indicative of the changing
influences of the well-fed classes upon
whom the neglected million fixes its keen eyes.
But there is the English character under it all.
The mob of London hooted Wiclif when, cited
to answer for himself before a bishop at St.
Paul's, he went attended by a royal duke and
other noble representatives of the court party.
The court party, then at odds with Rome,
profited materially by the pure Reformer's
disinterested protest against Church abuses, and was
glad to back him. It paid no more attention
to him when, still going forward on his way of
right, he ceased to serve its turn. But the mob,
who were against him when they saw him in
the company of their hard masters, learnt afterwards
something of the meaning of his life, and
were yet more tumultuous in his favour when
he was subject to ecclesiastical citation.

In old days, when the multitude was
absolutely unconsidered, its clumsy attempts to turn
wrong into right, were either things to fear or
bow before, or things to crush. Thus, in
William the Conqueror's time, after the execution
of Lynch law on the Bishop of Durham and
his followers, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, was sent
to take revenge upon Northumberland, and,
"with an army, he sore afflicted the country by
spoiling it on every side with great cruelty."
And that way of helping the untaught in their
struggle for satisfaction to the human sense of
justice was not extinct in the days of Peterloo.

In early accounts of pageants it is seldom
that we hear anything about the people who
were present. The grandees dress themselves
in a barbaric pomp, regardless of expense, and
parade themselves before the eyes of the ragged
commonalty. The most splendid procession in
which a bride ever was conveyed through
London streets, was that of 1533, when Henry
the Eighth had divorced Queen Katherine. The
City had not only a pompous water-procession
on the twenty-ninth of May, but also, two days
afterwards, one of the most brilliant of its
decorated street shows. From the Tower, where
the queen was to be received, to Temple Bar,
the streets were new gravelled and railed in on
each side. Within the rail on one side of the
way, stood the Hanseatic merchants and the
several City corporations, in their robes, from
Gracechurch to the upper end of Cheapside.
On the other side of the way, were the City
constables dressed in silk and velvet, with staves
in their hands to keep back the mob.
Gracechurch-street and Cornhill were hung with
crimson and scarlet cloth; and Goldsmiths'-row,
in Cheapside, with gold brocades, velvets, and
rich tapestry. The procession, rich in velvet
and satin, miniver and cloth of gold, included
the knights in their order, and the judges, the
abbots, barons, bishops, earls, and marquises, in
their robes, the dukes and the lord mayor on
horseback, the queen's officers in scarlet, the
queen herself on a litter brilliant in silver
brocade and ermine and jewels, under a gold
canopy, with pages in white damask, and a
following of knights; after whom came ladies in
crimson velvet, faced with gold brocade, riding