=Source.=--_The Times_, June 21.
The men of the Victorian age have lived in the midst of almost
cataclysmic mental changes. New facts have rained upon them with
a rapidity that baffles hypothesis, and stamps theory as obsolete
before half the world has become reconciled to its existence. In
such a time of intellectual flux anything like monumental art is
impossible, since neither the artist nor the age possesses the
permanence of mood required for a true presentment. Although,
however, the Victorian era has not produced much that the most
liberal charity can conceive as belonging to all time, it has
shown immense fertility and vigour in supplying the intellectual
wants of the present. In all but those supreme manifestations of
the human intellect which we ascribe to genius, its products are
at least equal, and in most cases superior, to those of any period
of our history, while in quantity and variety of intellectual
effort, and in diffusion of intellectual interest, it is entirely
unapproachable.
"REMEMBER MITCHELSTOWN" (1887).
=Source.=--_The Times_, October 19.
(MR. GLADSTONE at Nottingham): The case I have now to mention
goes further than that. It is the Mitchelstown case. I was
responsible for putting in a telegraphic answer to a telegram the
words, "Remember Mitchelstown," and Mitchelstown will and must
be remembered, and the meeting has an account to settle with the
Government in respect to Mitchelstown. I should have been glad to
have sealed my own lips, had not the Government sent forth its
testimony, its solemn, downright, unequivocal judgment that the
proceeding at Mitchelstown were right.... What did Mr. Balfour
say, when the Irish Nationalist members brought up the question of
the proceedings at Mitchelstown? He said that the whole action of
the police was in the face of the most tremendous provocation, and
absolutely in self-defence. He said that when the order to fire was
given the order was to fire only on those portions of the crowd who
were engaged in throwing stones.... Three human beings lost their
lives under the fire of the police. I cannot say three men, for in
the ordinary sense of the word they were not men. Two of them had
been men, and were in harmless old age. The other was growing to be
a man, and was still in harmless boyhood. Not one of these three
persons is even alleged to have thrown a stone. Not one of them, if
I recollect aright, is even alleged to have carried a stick.... Is
not this a melancholy and a miserable farce--tragic, too, in the
highest degree, when we consider that these trumpery proceedings,
perhaps of some casual boys or men, who are only able in the
utmost of their wrath and in the supply of stones that they could
command to break two or three windows in the police barracks--that
these are to be represented as leading and heading an attack which
caused a humane and intelligent body of the representatives of the
Government to fire out of windows, to kill three persons, one of
them distant 100 yards away, and two others sixty yards away. I
have said, and say again, "Remember Mitchelstown!"
"BLOODY SUNDAY" (1887).
=Source.=--Mackail's _Life of William Morris_, vol. ii., p. 190.
The restlessness among the working classes culminated in the
famous scenes of the 13th of November (1887), "Bloody Sunday,"
in and round Trafalgar Square. A meeting in the Square had been
announced to protest against the Irish policy of the Government;
it had been proclaimed by the police, and became converted into
a demonstration on a huge scale. No one who saw it will ever
forget the strange, and indeed terrible, sight of that grey
winter day, the vast sombre-coloured crowd, the brief but fierce
struggle at the corner of the Strand, and the river of steel and
scarlet that moved slowly through the dusky swaying masses when
two squadrons of the Life Guards were summoned up from Whitehall.
Only disorganized fragments straggled into the Square, to find
that the other columns had also been headed off or crushed, and
that the day was practically over. Preparations had been made to
repel something little short of a popular insurrection. An immense
police force had been concentrated, and in the afternoon the Square
was lined by a battalion of Foot Guards, with fixed bayonets and
twenty rounds of ball cartridge. For an hour or two the danger was
imminent of street-fighting such as had not been known in London
for more than a century. But the organized force at the disposal
of the civil authorities proved sufficient to check the insurgent
columns and finally clear the streets without a shot being fired.
For some weeks afterwards the Square was garrisoned by special
drafts of police. Otherwise London next day had resumed its usual
aspect. Once more the London Socialists had drawn into line with
the great mass of the London Radicals, and a formidable popular
movement had resulted, which, on that Sunday, was within a very
little of culminating in a frightful loss of life and the practical
establishment of a state of siege in London. But the English spirit
of compromise soon made itself felt.... Measures were taken for the
relief of the unemployed. Political Radicalism resumed its normal
occupations; and by the end of the year the Socialist League had
dropped back into its old place, a small body of enthusiasts among
whom an Anarchist group were now beginning to assume a distinct
prominence.