ASSERTING THE RIGHT OF PUBLIC MEETING—PUBLIC AND PARLIAMENTARY
FRIENDS—CONFERENCE OF M.P.’S—THE ORGANS OF THE MOVEMENT—MEETING
AT EXETER HALL—A MONSTER PETITION TO PARLIAMENT—ELUDING THE LAW
OF CONSPIRACY.
But it was not Booth’s way to take a defeat so tamely. Almost immediately
the organisation was re-formed on a more definite basis than ever,
with a new high-sounding title of the “United General Post-Office and
Telegraph Service Benefit Society.” Rules were made and collections were
started; Booth was appointed chairman, and a dismissed agitator, named
Hawkins, was engaged as secretary. After the official rebuff the men
felt it unsafe to join openly, but they none the less joined secretly,
and cheerfully responded to the calls upon their purse. Booth animated
the whole movement; and it is probable that but for him the department
would have seen it crumble to pieces, yet they probably saw that his
dismissal just then would only have strengthened his arm against them.
The authorities, however, went so far as to suspend him from duty on
some trivial pretext; and Booth was not slow to turn the fact to his
advantage. He immediately set about organising a public meeting to be
held at the Cannon Street Hotel, 16th July 1873. The objects of this
meeting were twofold: it was to strengthen the hands of the members of
Parliament who were supporting the postal petition, and it provided a
means of protesting against the leader’s unjust suspension. But mainly it
was intended as a hint to the Government, and as a parade of strength to
show that their Parliamentary friends were well supported by a following
in the postal service. A few days previous to the date of the meeting
a conference had taken place in the tea-room of the House of Commons,
attended by nearly every member pledged to their support, from whom the
statement of grievances, made by Booth and several others, received
a very attentive hearing. Among the members of Parliament who had
interested themselves in the postal case were Mr. W. H. Smith, Mr. A. J.
Mundella, Mr. Roger Eykyn, Mr. J. Locke, and several other influential
members. And it was to give support to their friends in the House that
this first Cannon Street Hotel meeting was called.
On the Post-Office vote being taken on Monday, 28th July, the claims of
the aggrieved postal employés were strongly urged upon the attention of
the Government by each of those members who had attended the tea-room
conference, and the advocacy of Mr. W. H. Smith, Mr. Mundella, and
others was particularly able. The reply of the Government was, however,
unfavourable, or at least unsatisfactory.
The antagonism towards their claims, as voiced in the House by the
Postmaster-General and other members of the Government on that occasion,
caused Booth to decide on another public meeting. This meeting of protest
against the decision of the Government was called also in Cannon Street
Hotel, on Tuesday, 5th August, and was to be presided over by Sir John
Bennett. The forthcoming meeting was officially “proclaimed,” and the
men were warned against attending such public demonstrations; but it was
looked forward to with enthusiasm. Elaborate preparations were made for
the forthcoming meeting, and almost all the funds in hand were used to
ensure its success. Five brass bands were engaged, and the procession
of district men then off duty, marshalled by Booth, was to start from
Finsbury Square so as to reach St. Martin’s-le-Grand a minute or so
before eight o’clock, the hour when the staff at the General Post-Office
would cease work. The district contingents turned out strong at the
place of meeting, and by a quarter to eight the procession of postmen
in uniform, followed by an enormous crowd of sightseers, moved in the
direction of Cannon Street by way of St. Martin’s-le-Grand. The five
brass bands blared out some stirring marching tunes, and the procession
was animated with all the enthusiasm of men anxious of defying
authority. On reaching the General Post-Office they were quickly joined
by the letter-sorters, letter-carriers, and others, and their numbers now
swollen to a big battalion, they marched to Cannon Street Hotel as if to
capture a fortress, the bands meanwhile keeping them in step with “The
Postman’s Knock” and “Rule, Britannia.”
The huge hall of the Cannon Street Hotel was filled to overflowing within
five minutes of the arrival of the procession; and the utmost enthusiasm
took possession of them. Sir John Bennett, who had already distinguished
himself as a friend of the postal workers, was punctually in the chair.
Sir John, with his snowy ringlets, his gold spectacles, his velveteen
jacket and Hessian boots, and his fresh, clean-shaven, almost boyish
features, which so belied his years, was a familiar public character,
and the postal employés felt that in securing him for chairman they were
favoured. Among those supporting the platform were Henry Broadhurst—not
yet M.P., but only a working stonemason; George Potter, who then owned
and edited the _Beehive_ newspaper; and Charles Bradlaugh, not yet either
so notorious or so distinguished as he afterwards became.
The speeches were stirring, and the keynote of almost every speaker was
that as postal employés enjoyed the right of every citizen to petition
Parliament, they had no need to fear the petty restrictions of red-tape;
and this inalienable right should be their sheet anchor and their hope.
At the same time the authorities were violently denounced for so meanly
visiting their resentment on the leader Booth by suspending him without
any assigned cause; and, as may be surmised, the most capital was made
out of the incident, the action of the authorities being ascribed to
his having dared to exercise his right as a free-born Englishman; in
which, on the whole, the speakers were probably not far wrong. Mr. M.
C. Torrens, M.P., and other well-known friends of the movement graced
the platform, and formed the necessary firing party. All the speaking
from the platform was done by the public friends and sympathisers; the
postal employés themselves significantly remaining dumb. They had not
yet the right of free speech, though they had asserted the liberty of
holding a public meeting in this fashion; that was to be tested later
on. The public press noticed the meeting at some length; and it acted
as a splendid advertisement for the postal claims. The next day Booth
was ordered back to the Chief Office, not, however, to receive his
sentence of dismissal as was surmised, but to be restored to duty without
suffering the loss of pay usual in such circumstances.
For the purpose of discussing ways and means of raising funds to keep
the fire going and sustaining the enthusiasm of the men, there were also
one or two meetings held at a little hall known as the Albion Hall,
conveniently situated in London Wall, near to the General Post-Office.
Mr. George Potter took the chair, and Sir John Bennett, of Cheapside
fame, ably supported.
Sir John Bennett had proved himself one of the staunchest and most
industrious of their numerous public friends at this period. He had an
especial liking for the postmen, and any one of them in uniform could
purchase a three-guinea watch at his shop at something like thirty-five
per cent. discount. But they were doomed to lose him in a somewhat
peculiar manner. The postal volunteer corps, the then 49th Middlesex,
had been formed on the occasion of the Fenian scare of 1868; and during
a recurrence of a similar alarm from the same causes, a number of the
postmen and others joined the corps in a body. Sir John Bennett was
peculiar in his views of postal patriotism, and dropped the postmen and
their agitation from that moment.
“If,” said he in his blunt fashion, “you who are agitating for better
hours and a better wage can find time to go ‘gallavanting’ about with
weapons of destruction in your hands, you have no reason to ask my
assistance.”
It was scarcely a fair statement of the position; but he was not to be
moved further, and kept his word.
That, however, was a loss not to be sustained till later.
Not long after the great public meeting, and probably resulting from
it to some extent, there was a slight revision in the scales of pay of
the London town letter-carriers. But it was a very niggardly affair,
and the entire benefit secured amounted to about £52 in a period of
fifteen years, or a rise of one shilling and fourpence per week, no
regular addition being made to the maximum or minimum, while even
this small benefit was confined to a small class of about four hundred
men only. This, in the circumstances, could not be accepted as a
complete settlement of all their various claims. It was not only quite
inadequate to meet the needs of the class it was intended to satisfy,
but entirely ignored the claims of the suburban, auxiliary, and country
letter-carriers, and also those of the sorters, assistants, and porters,
many of whom stood in even greater need of an increase of salary
than the limited number who received this slight benefit. This small
unsatisfactory scheme was rendered all the more unsatisfactory by its
giving to the inspectors a really substantial increase amounting to 8
per cent. on their minimum, 25 per cent. on the annual increment, and 20
per cent. on the maximum. The inspectors who thus mostly benefited were
already regarded as comparatively a well-paid class, besides which they
as a body had contributed neither funds nor sympathy to the agitation
which had secured these benefits for them. What was intended as a sop
was only another fresh cause for dissatisfaction; and in any case it was
deemed necessary to prosecute the agitation with renewed vigour.
Thereupon Booth and his associates, with a view of strengthening the
Society and definitely proclaiming their character as trades unionists
pure and simple, got the Postal Union affiliated to the London Trades
Council. They hoped thereby to secure the co-operation of the various
trade societies, should at any time it be deemed necessary or expedient
to call for that assistance which they themselves were prepared to render
to others.
Again, some little time after this great public demonstration, the leader
of the agitation, Booth, found himself suspended from duty by order of
the Controller. It was not that impending dismissal had any terrors for
him, but he was determined to avoid if possible the humiliation of it.
With his usual readiness he decided to take the bull by the horns in
his own fashion. He conceived the idea that unless some such step as he
contemplated were taken at once, his dismissal, which he knew had been
recommended, would this time be certain. He hurried off to the printers
who usually did such work for the movement in those days, but was told
the men could not be prevailed on to work after the usual time. Booth
said he had a job which would engage them all night, and being told that
it was quite impossible, asked to see the men in a body. He came, he
saw, he conquered, and the men agreed to stop the night through for the
production of a cartoon which had been roughly sketched out. It took
three hours to prepare the lithograph-stone, three draughtsmen being
simultaneously engaged on parts of the sketch. During the night and early
morning four or five thousand copies were printed off, and by ten o’clock
they were being sold like hot cakes in St. Martin’s-le-Grand and all
over the City. To ensure their sale and circulation they were virtually
given away to the street-hawkers, who retailed them at a penny apiece.
The first batch was soon exhausted, and before the day was over as many
thousands more were sold. The pictorial lampoon had little of artistic
merit to recommend it; it was fearfully and wonderfully made; the drawing
was vile even for caricature; but the letterpress, the scriptural
quotations wittily applied, and the illustrations together, told. The
broadsheet contained four or five separate illustrations having reference
to the recent great procession of postal employés to Cannon Street Hotel,
“in defiance of official threats”; the question of Sunday labour, hit off
by the figure of a portly bishop offering a tract on Sunday observance
to an overladen postman; the recent postal petition to Parliament, and
cognate matters. Booth, suspended from duty, was represented by a figure
on a gibbet, intended as the mental vision in the mind of the official
who had ordered it; while disposed about in odd corners of the cartoon
was a “spy-glass,” “the bullet,” “ye sack,” labelled “Post-Office
persuaders.” It did not bear criticism, but as the work of a single
night it was interesting; and, what was more, it had some of the effect
intended. The suspended leader was restored to duty the day following.
What had now come to be known as the Postal Petition to Parliament
was from that moment never lost sight of by its promoters and their
followers. Booth and his little staff of lieutenants worked night and
day and every hour that their official duties spared to them to keep
the petition before the members of the House of Commons. One result of
their persistent efforts in this direction was that they had soon quite
a respectable number of Parliamentary friends who promised to support
the motion for inquiry when it came to be raised on the estimates. And
petitioners were not content merely with verbal promises of support,
for where possible they obtained an autograph letter embodying the
promise, which letters were put on record in the _Postman_, the organ of
the movement. Booth during this time was untiringly ubiquitous. He was
everywhere, and his hand was in everything, from getting out circulars to
lobbying M.P.’s. He undertook the duties of the orderly as well as those
of the captain.
Among the petty annoyances to which Booth had been subjected by his
zealous superiors was his being made to finish up his evening duty at the
furthest possible point from his home, his last delivery of letters being
by the Angel, Islington, he living at Brixton. But he now succeeded in
getting on a walk by which he had to deliver the Temple, where eminent
counsel and the élite of the legal profession most do congregate. He did
this with a motive, knowing that he might make friends among those who
could command influence. He soon found an opportunity of making himself
known to every legal M.P. who had chambers in this vicinity, while
those who were prospective candidates for Parliamentary honours no less
escaped his attention. In addition to making friends for the movement by
this means, Booth and his lieutenants—Hawkins, the secretary; Haley, a
fellow-sorter, and virtually second in command; and others, interviewed
eminent divines of every denomination on the sore question of compulsory
Sunday labour in the Post-Office.
Such were the number of promises of support they received from M.P.’s,
and such were their importunities, that at last it was resolved to hold
another conference in the tea-room of the House of Commons to discuss the
petition and decide on some action if possible.
Earl Percy took the chair, and among those present who had pronounced
favourably on the postal claims were Mr. Mundella, Mr. W. H. Smith, and
Mr. Roger Eykyn. A deputation of the aggrieved postal employés had been
invited to urge the points of the petition for a Select Committee of the
House, and these points provided arguments for better pay and improved
prospects of promotion, and the abolition of the hated compulsory Sunday
labour.
The conference listened attentively and sympathetically, as conferences
always do when they are composed of politicians out of office. In
the present instance the tea-room conference was composed chiefly of
Tories who coveted the seats on the Treasury bench then occupied by the
Liberals. There could be little doubt about the honesty of the intentions
of Mr. W. H. Smith, of Mr. Mundella, or of Mr. Roger Eykyn; they each
proved it in every manner possible. They each by this time were well
informed on the postal grievances, having been interviewed privately on
previous occasions. But at this stage of the proceedings the agitators
were not quite sure how far the good intentions of these gentlemen would
be carried into practical effect. For it has ever been a common practice
with the party in opposition, Liberals and Tories alike, just before the
eve of a General Election to gather up all the elements of discontent
throughout the country and promise support to each in turn. But at length
the men, having pleaded their various points, came away fully assured
that in the Tory party lay their principal hope of salvation, though
they were aware that some time must elapse before their petition could
come to be considered by Parliament. Their one aim now being a Select
Committee of Inquiry, their Parliamentary policy became more active than
ever, every by-election being assiduously watched and every candidate
approached by personal interview or by letter.
At this time, between 1872 and 1874, agitation was rife among all
classes of labour throughout the country, and the feeling of discontent
was principally due to the cost of the necessaries of life being out
of proportion to wages. This was followed by a general rise in wages
to meet the increased cost of living among the working population,
many employers, to their credit, voluntarily raising the wages of
their employés. This circumstance very materially strengthened the
postal claim for an increase on their wretched pay; but the Post-Office
as the greatest employer of labour would not concede one farthing
until compelled by the public and Parliament. The officials with
characteristic obstinacy defended the state of stagnation as to wages
and promotion prevailing in the Post-Office. On one occasion, about
this period, when the leaders of the agitation had reason to interview
the Controller on the matter, that official, who considered his wisdom
was none too well paid at £1200 a year, pointed to himself and reminded
them even he had to cut down his luxuries. This provoked the retort
from one of the poorly-paid men, that in his, the Controller’s, case it
simply meant a denial of luxuries, but in their case it meant a denial
of the very necessaries of life for themselves and wives and families.
This might have been dismissed with an official frown as only a mild
impertinence; but the Controller, a thick-set, burly, overfed man,
unwittingly growled out the brutal truth in his rejoinder, “WE don’t
engage your wives and families; WE only want the men!”
But the universal rise in wages everywhere outside the Post-Office could
not but provide them with a further justification for continuing the
agitation for an inquiry. They obtained further funds to carry on the
campaign, and more public friends rallied round them. Daily the postmen
were becoming more than ever objects of sympathy. Subscriptions flowed
in steadily from postal bodies all over the country, and a list of these
subscriptions was published in the _Beehive_ newspaper, which for some
time past had opened its columns to the budding literati of the movement.
The postal organisation had had for some time now an official organ of
its own, the _Postman_; but as it had not the weight and authority of a
public organ, circulating, as it did, among postal servants only, the
assistance rendered by the _Beehive_ was not inconsiderable. Edited by
George Potter, who of course was in full sympathy with the agitation, its
columns placed at the disposal of the postal cause were several times
contributed to by Lloyd-Jones.
One postal contributor to the _Beehive_, who was the literary champion of
the movement, was one of Booth’s lieutenants, a postman, who wrote under
the _nom de plume_ of “Silverstick.” The contributions of “Silverstick”
betrayed no small amount of literary merit, and were eagerly looked for
every issue by the men.
The hospitality of the _Beehive_ was fully taken advantage of at this
time (the official organ of the movement, the _Postman_, having now
fizzled out), and the agitation received no small support from its
powerful advocacy. George Potter, whose name will always be associated
with public reform, gave the postal advocates carte-blanche in the use
of his organ; and the secretary of the postal movement, Hawkins, who
was employed on it, was assisted in every possible manner to bring
postal grievances to the front. Besides the _Beehive_ there had been the
_Postman_, which exclusively devoted itself to the advocacy of their
claims, and which, to an extent, rendered valuable service by being
circulated among their outside public and Parliamentary friends. It may
here be mentioned that the _Postman_ had been started some few years
before, being originally brought out as a small printer’s venture. It was
started at the instigation of a postman named March, who was associated
with the small printer’s business in question, situated in Clerkenwell
Close, and he was principally instrumental in making the _Postman_ the
success it afterwards became. March, the postman agitator, was the
same March who, when he left the postal service built up a flourishing
business as a ballad printer, supplying hawkers and street singers with
topical rhymes, coupled with the publication of more innocent toy-books
and fairy stories for juveniles.
The _Postman_ was almost wholly contributed by the leaders of the
agitation, assisted by notes and scraps of interest from various
correspondents of the different branches of the service. The circulation
was kept going at this time principally by Booth and the others. It was
never allowed to be openly sold in the Post-Office, though means were
found to evade the vexatious prohibition, and the condemned publication
was all the more anxiously looked for when the day of issue arrived.
Booth generally directed special attention to it among the postmen. He
always managed to obtain advance copies, and, knowing the most important
item of news, gave the word to be passed round directly he came on duty,
“Look on page so-and-so of the _Postman_.” Before the duty was over it
had circulated all over the General Post-Office.
In connection with this organ of the movement it may be of interest
to mention that for a time it was machined at the same firm as was the
_Court Circular_ or _Journal_; and there was a story to the effect that
these pages of the two very dissimilar publications being of equal size,
on one occasion two “formes” of type got mysteriously mixed, and to the
amazement of the _Postman_ readers the next issue informed them, after
reporting some of the private doings of the Queen and Court, that her
Majesty had graciously seen fit to order an inquiry into the postmen’s
grievances.
The leaders now decided on a third big public demonstration. The same
preparations as before were made, bands engaged and public men written to
and interviewed to get their presence on the platform. Exeter Hall was
chosen this time as the place of meeting, and when the date, November
18, 1873, arrived the principal anxiety of Booth and his lieutenants
was as to where they should find room on the platform for all the
brilliant notabilities who had promised to attend. The chair was this
time to be taken by Mr. Roger Eykyn, M.P. for Windsor, while their old
champion, Sir John Bennett, was once more to appear with his well-known
and ever-welcome “So here we are once again, my postman friends!” The
district contingents as before met at Finsbury Square, and with brass
bands playing and colours flying they marched to St. Martin’s-le-Grand,
where at eight o’clock they were promptly joined by the men of the Chief
Office. Then defiantly striking up “Rule, Britannia,” they moved on
towards Fleet Street, the authorities meanwhile crowding at the windows
of the General Post-Office to watch the procession as it swept round
into Newgate Street. On reaching Fleet Street the greatest excitement
prevailed, the traffic had to be suspended, and crowds from all parts
joined in the congestion. The postal procession was this time preceded
by two red mail-vans, which, with the postmen in uniform, gave it a tone
of local colour. The band, during its slow progress towards the place of
meeting, improved the shining hour with “The Postman’s Knock” and “Work,
Boys, Work, and be Contented,” a musical sarcasm in the circumstances
much appreciated. Exeter Hall was not large enough to hold the immense
throng who sought admission, and an overflow meeting had to be held in a
side street. Exeter Hall platform presented a distinguished gathering
of public men supporting the chair, which was filled by Mr. Roger Eykyn,
the member for Windsor. Among those who crowded the platform was the
midget-like figure of the redoubtable George Odger, president of the
London Trades Council, who had brought with him a deputation of trades
unionists. There were a large number of members of Parliament, and the
principal labour leaders of the day, notably Mr. George Howell, who had
already endeared himself to the postal servants by doing an enormous
amount of work for them one way and another. The meeting was addressed
by Sir Antonio Brady and several distinguished M.P.’s, among the number
being W. Williams, M.P., W. Fowler, M.P., and A. Stavely Hill, M.P.
It was at this meeting that Booth determined to test once and for all the
right of postal servants to speak in public. He and one or two others
spoke, and Booth took means to get their utterances reported among the
speakers.
The result was as he had anticipated. He and the others were carpeted
before the Controller. That official said that his attention having
been drawn to the reported meeting, it was his duty to call on them to
explain. There was nothing very objectionable in the language they were
reported to have used, but the fact of speaking at all sufficiently
compromised them as Government servants. Booth and his associates were
called on for written statements, and they each defended their conduct
on the ground that they were exercising a common citizen right in asking
Parliament and the public for a redress of those grievances which the
department had refused to consider.
Within a few days they were again called up to listen to a severe
reprimand from the Postmaster-General. There was some protest to a few
public men, and Mr. Roger Eykyn interviewed the Permanent Secretary on
behalf of the men; but there the matter ended.
The men themselves, however, feeling that their speeches had been so
studiously modest and moderate, could not but regard such notice being
taken by the authorities as both arbitrary and unconstitutional, and
opposed to the spirit of English liberty.
Based on the resolutions passed at this public meeting, a monster
petition to the House of Commons was prepared on behalf of the
letter-carriers, sorters, porters’ assistants, rural messengers, and
others employed in the minor establishment of the Post-Office throughout
London, suburban, provincial, and rural districts. Having regard to
the increased cost of living and the rise in the value of most classes
of labour, they submitted that the time had arrived when such an
addition should be made to their pay as would constitute a more adequate
remuneration for their arduous and responsible duties. A Commission of
Inquiry was also strongly asked for to receive evidence on the questions
of promotion, Sunday labour, and general grievances not specified but
known to exist.
One of the principal planks in the platform of the postal movement
at this time was the abolition of compulsory Sunday labour for
letter-carriers; and in furtherance of this end Booth and the other
agitators interviewed the most eminent divines and religious leaders
of the day. Among those whose assistance was sought to procure a free
Sunday for postal workers was Cardinal Manning. A deputation of Booth
and two other postmen waited on his Eminence at his residence. He was
politic in discussing the question; he sympathised with them in their
laudable efforts to relieve Sunday labour; but he hesitated to pledge
himself to assist them; he must have time to consider the matter. The
deputation withdrew inspired with very little hope from their diplomatic
reception. The truth was Cardinal Manning hesitated to in any way assist
in hampering the Government while Mr. Gladstone was tackling the Catholic
University question. They interviewed Dr. Parker at the City Temple,
with a vague sort of hope that he might denounce postal Sunday labour
from his own pulpit. But Dr. Parker did not prove the rigid Calvinistic
Sabbatarian they imagined; he thought that certain forms of labour were
very necessary even on the Lord’s Day, and it was desirable to receive
letters from distant friends and relations at least once on Sunday. Even
Professor Fawcett and Mr. Charles Bradlaugh both concurred in thinking
this a weak plank in their platform, and tried to induce Booth to abandon
it for a time at least. But Booth would not be dictated to even by two
such men as these, and expressed his determination to try to carry it
through in spite of all opposition.
This question of compulsory Sunday labour, as it affected the rural
letter-carriers especially, was a very sore one. Some lines of verse
written by one of their number were about this time freely circulated.
The few lines selected will show that they possessed tolerable poetic
merit.
THE POSTMAN’S DAY OF REST
We are toiling, we are toiling on each sunny Sabbath morn,
We are toiling when the dewdrops sparkle on the white-robed thorn,
We are toiling when the sons of toil have found a Sabbath blest;
But for us no Sabbath dawning, no holy day of rest.
We are toiling thro’ the dewy fields ere peeps the eye of morn,
When the mist on pastures hanging makes the aspect so forlorn;
Thro’ mud and mist, and mire, and rain we pick our toilsome way,
While fellow-men are warmly housed upon the Sabbath day.
If in the annals of the world your names unrivalled stand,
Then cleanse so foul a blot from the escutcheon of our land,
And a thousand hands shall cease from toil, and find a day of rest,
And the God of heaven shall bless you, as He has our country blest.
F. K. (_Letter-carrier_).
[An appeal from the rural letter-carriers of England, who are employed
delivering letters, circulars, and newspapers on the Sabbath day.]
While this question of Sunday labour was being pushed to the front, Mr.
Joseph Chamberlain, M.P., desiring to become Mayor of Birmingham, was
approached by Booth, who promised him the whole postal support of the
town if Mr. Chamberlain would in return direct his influence against
Sunday duty imposed on postal officials. The promise was given; Mr.
Chamberlain became mayor, but he now found it would be inexpedient in the
commercial interests of Birmingham especially to abolish Sunday labour in
the Post-Office.
Although the right to exercise the one privilege accorded to every
British citizen, that of presenting a petition to Parliament, had up to
now been their mainstay and the bulwark of their personal protection,
the agitators constantly found that they were the objects of departmental
attention. They had been particularly careful, for the success of their
movement, to proceed along thoroughly constitutional lines, and nothing
could have tempted Booth and his associates to depart from this. As has
already been shown, the disappointment induced by the protracted methods
of the Government, and the antagonism of the officials to the agitation,
was such that it might easily have risen to the point of rebellion had
the leaders been so inclined; but they were not; and as it was they had
frequently to exercise to the utmost their restraining influence on the
men. It was scarcely to be supposed that the authorities would give them
any credit for this, and as was only natural, perhaps the leaders were
held wholly responsible for the strained relations between the department
and its subordinates. Booth and his lieutenants therefore had no mercy
to expect from their superiors should they commit themselves. The very
surveillance, the constant spying, and every manner of testing and
trap-laying to which Booth especially was subjected, would have caused
any other man with less fortitude and with a more sensitive temperament
to have given up long before he did. But to all the insidious influences
to which he was exposed, Booth especially never showed the least
concern, but went about his work as though there were never an official
to dog his footsteps even to his own door, nor a band of the permanent
officials anxiously waiting and watching for the moment when they might
reasonably dismiss him with humiliation and degradation. In the official
mind in those days, whoever lent themselves to agitation within the
walls of a Government office could be little better than desperadoes and
conspirators, disloyal alike to the service and the public. It was not
to be wondered at, then, that they were regarded as playing a desperate
game, which, to go no further, even as yet almost brought them within
the clutches of the law. The agitators were not blind to the position
in which they stood, nor ignorant altogether of the desire of the
authorities to encompass their destruction. Already Booth had been most
unpleasantly made aware that his private correspondence had been tampered
with in its passage through the post; that, before reaching his hands,
the letters addressed to him had been watched for and “Grahamed”—to
use an expression which signified the secret methods of opening and
overhauling suspected people’s correspondence then, as a survival of
the “Espionage Room,” more or less in vogue in the Confidential Inquiry
Branch of the General Post-Office. While the department had such a
piece of machinery as this at its disposal, it was not going to confine
its use to such men as Mazzini and political personages disagreeable
to the Government, and allow the postman Booth, and others of its own
household, to escape. He had had cause to more than suspect that his
letters, addressed to those who were assisting the agitation, had been
intercepted, and their purport conveyed to the authorities who had
ordered it. To evade the prying curiosity of official detectives and the
“Grahaming” process, the letters exchanged through the post between the
leaders, and touching on questions of policy, were thereafter directed to
a fictitious “Mrs. Harvey” at various convenient addresses.
Nor did departmental antagonism, both open and concealed, to the
principle of combination rest here. That the ringleaders of the agitation
had all along pursued purely legitimate and constitutional methods to
obtain redress for their grievances, affording so few technical loopholes
through which they might be made answerable, was almost sufficient in
itself to cause the department to look on them as mischievous breeders of
wholesale contumacy and discontent, and agitators of the most dangerous
description. They might have got rid of them one by one “on suspicion”—a
process of dismissal which carried with it an implication of common
dishonesty—only that the men had now too many powerful advocates, and,
moreover, there might have been an outcry in the press against such an
obviously hollow pretext. They were so far saved from such a fate as
had befallen others of a lesser calibre. But they had, almost unknown
to themselves, narrowly escaped losing their personal liberty for the
part they had taken. It was only owing to an accidental hint dropped by
an eminent member of the legal profession and a member of Parliament,
who at the time was friendly disposed towards Booth and his movement,
that the whole of them were not made the subjects of a Government
prosecution under the odious law of conspiracy. Booth ferreted the
matter out, and learnt that the brief was already prepared. The postal
leader was given the comforting assurance that he stood to get two years’
imprisonment, and the others nine or six months apiece, and that the
writs would probably be issued within a few days. Such, at least, was
the information gathered, and circumstances made it extremely probable
that the Government contemplated delivering one blow which would not only
rid the postal service of a number of powerful agitators, but completely
demoralise and disorganise their followers for years to come. If such
was the motive, then the Government was checkmated in one simple move.
Booth at the time was on the Temple “delivery,” and it was due to this
fact principally that he obtained the interest and assistance of several
eminent counsel who had either already obtained or had an eye on a
seat in the House. After piecing his information together, so as to be
morally certain that some such _coup_ was intended, Booth the same day
hastily summoned a meeting of the executive of the postal organisation,
and before night handbills were in circulation advertising the fact that
Booth was now the sole official representative of the movement. Next
day he learnt the contemplated prosecution was to be abandoned, for
the sufficient reason that the Law of Conspiracy could not very well
be made to apply to one man only, it taking three at least to become
conspirators. After Booth’s adroit manœuvre they could not with decency
proceed against the agitators by legal action, and so nothing more was
heard of the matter.