Neue Oder-Zeitung.
No. 295, 28 June 1855.
Midday Edition

X. London, 25 June. (Church Agitation.) Ancient and historic is the doctrine that moribund social powers, still nominally in possession of all the attributes of authority long after the ground of their existence has mouldered away beneath their feet—lingering on because the heirs are already squabbling over the assumption of the inheritance before the death certificate has been printed and the testament opened—pull themselves together once more before the final death struggle, pass from the defensive to the offensive, challenge instead of avoiding a fight, and seek to draw the most extreme conclusions from premises that are not merely called in question but already condemned. So now the English oligarchy. So the Church, its twin sister. Innumerable are the attempts within the state church, high and low, to reorganise itself, the attempts to come to terms with the Dissenters and thus to establish a compact power in face of the profane mass of the nation; the religious coercive measures follow rapidly upon one another—the pious Earl of Shaftesbury, formerly known as Lord Ashley, lamentably stated in the House of Lords that in England alone five million people are completely estranged not only from the Church, but from Christianity altogether. “Compelle intrare”, replies the state church. It leaves it to Lord Ashley and similar dissenting, sectarian, and overwrought zealots to pull the chestnuts out of the fire that it intends to eat. The first religious means of coercion was the Beer Bill, which closed all public places of amusement on Sundays, with the exception of the hours from 6 to 10 in the evening. It was smuggled through a thin House at the close of the session, after the pious had bought the support of the great London brew-masters by guaranteeing them the continuation of the patent system, i.e., the monopoly of large capitals. Then came the Sunday Trading Bill, which has now passed its third reading in the Commons, and whose individual clauses have just been debated in committee of the whole House. In this new coercive measure, too, the voice of

big capital was secured, because only small shopkeepers trade on Sundays and the great emporium is perfectly ready to clear the Sunday competition of the little boutique out of the way by parliamentary means. In both cases conspiracy of the Church with the monopoly of capital, but in both cases religious penal laws against the lower classes to soothe the conscience of the upper classes. The Beer Bill hit the aristocratic clubs as little as the Sunday Trading Bill hits genteel Sunday occupations. The working class receives its wages late on Saturday; it is for it, therefore, that Sunday trading exists. It alone is forced to make its small purchases on Sunday. The new bill, therefore, is directed solely against it. In the eighteenth century the French aristocracy said: For us Voltaire, for the people the mass and the tithe. In the nineteenth century the English aristocracy says: For us the canting phrase, for the people Christian practice. The classic saints of Christianity mortified their bodies for the salvation of the soul of the multitude; the modern, educated saints mortify the body of the multitude for the salvation of their own souls. This alliance of a dissolute, decaying, and pleasure-loving aristocracy with the Church, resting on the sordid profit calculations of beer magnates and monopolising great shopkeepers, called forth yesterday a mass demonstration in Hyde Park such as London has not seen since the death of George IV, the “first gentleman of Europe”. We were spectators from beginning to end, and we do not believe we exaggerate when we affirm that in Hyde Park yesterday the English Revolution began. The latest news from the Crimea was an essential ferment of this “unparliamentary”, “extra-parliamentary”, and “anti-parliamentary” demonstration. Lord Robert Grosvenor, the author of the Sunday Trading Bill, had replied to the objection that his law was directed only against the poor, not against the rich classes, with the words: “the aristocracy to a great extent abstained from employing their servants and their horses on Sundays”. In the last days of the past week the following placard, issued by the Chartists and printed in large type, was to be read on all the walls of London: “New Sunday Bill prohibiting newspapers, shaving, smoking, eating and drinking, and all kinds of nourishment and recreation, bodily or mental, which are at present still enjoyed by the poor people. An open-air meeting of artisans, workers, and the ‘lower orders’ of the capital will be held in Hyde Park on Sunday afternoon to see how religiously the aristocracy observes the Sabbath and how anxious it is not to set its servants and horses to work on that day. See Lord Robert Grosvenor’s

Speech. The meeting is convened for 3 o’clock, on the right side of the Serpentine (little river in Hyde Park), towards Kensington Gardens. Come! And bring your wives and families with you! So that they may profit by the example which their ‘betters’ set them!”

It should be known that what Longchamps is for the Parisians, the drive in Hyde Park alongside the Serpentine is for the English *haute volée*—the place where, in the afternoon, and especially on Sundays, they parade their splendid carriages and their finery and make their horses prance, followed by swarms of lackeys. It will be seen from the above placard how the struggle against priestcraft assumes the same character as every serious struggle in England, the character of the class struggle of the poor against the rich, the people against the aristocracy, the “lower” against the “better” ranks. At 3 o’clock some 50,000 people were assembled at the appointed spot, on the right bank of the Serpentine, on the immense meadows of Hyde Park, and their numbers gradually swelled, through arrivals from the left bank as well, to at least 200,000. Smaller knots of people could be seen being pushed from one point to another. The constables posted in large numbers evidently sought to deprive the authors of the meeting of what Archimedes wanted in order to lift the world from its hinges, a firm standpoint. At length a larger crowd took up a position, and Bligh, the Chartist, constituted himself as chairman on a small hillock in the midst of the crowd. He had scarcely begun his harangue when Police Inspector Banks, at the head of forty truncheon-wielding constables, declared to him that the Park was royal private property and no meeting might be held there. After some *pourparlers*, in which Bligh sought to demonstrate to him that the Parks were the property of the public, and during which Banks replied that he had strict orders to arrest him if he persisted in his intention, Bligh, amidst the tremendous roar of the surrounding mass, cried out: “Her Majesty’s police declare that Hyde Park is royal private property and that Her Majesty is unwilling to lend her land to the people for their meetings. Let us therefore adjourn to Oxford Market.” With the ironic cry: “God save the Queen!” the knot dissolved, in order to make a pilgrimage to Oxford Market. Meanwhile, however, Finlen, a member of the Central Chartist Committee, had rushed over to a tree standing at some distance; masses followed him and encircled him in a twinkling in a circle so narrow and dense that the police gave up the attempt to press forward to him. “We are enslaved six days in the week, and Parliament wants to rob us of the little bit of freedom on the seventh. They want to do penance, not on themselves, but on us, these oligarchs and capitalists in coalition with eye-rolling priests, for the unscrupulous murder

with which they have sacrificed the children of the people in the Crimea.” We left the group in order to approach another, where a speaker, stretched full length upon the ground, was haranguing his audience in this horizontal situation. Suddenly was heard from all sides: “Off to the drive, off to the carriages!” By this time the insulting of equipages and riders had already begun. The constables, who were constantly receiving reinforcements from the city, drove the promenaders away from the drive. They thus helped to form dense human espaliers on both sides of the drive, from Apsley House up Rotten Row along the Serpentine as far as Kensington Gardens, a stretch of more than a quarter of an hour. The public consisted of about three-quarters workers and one-quarter members of the middle class, all with wives and children. The actors against their will, elegant ladies and gentlemen, “commoners and lords” in high state carriages, with gallooned servants in front and behind, sundry elderly gentlemen on horseback heated with port wine, did not this time pass in review. They ran the gauntlet. A Babylon of mocking, provocative, ill-sounding tones, in which no language is as rich as English, surged around them from both sides. Since the concert was improvised, instruments were lacking. The chorus was therefore obliged to make use of its own organs and to restrict itself to vocal music. And a diabolical concert it was, of grunting, hissing, whistling, snarling, growling, murmuring, squawking, shrill, groaning, rattling, squeaking, gnashing tones. A music to drive people mad and to bring stones to consciousness. A peculiar mixture, besides, of outbreaks of genuine old English humour and of long-suppressed, seething fury. “Go to the church!” was the only articulated sound that could be distinguished. A lady stretched out a soothing, orthodox-bound prayer-book from her carriage. “Give it to read to your horses!” thundered the thousand-voiced echo in reply. When the horses shied, reared, bucked, bolted, and threatened the lives of their elegant loads, the mocking howl rose louder, more menacing, more relentless. Noble lords and ladies, among others the Countess of Granville, wife of the Minister and President of the Privy Council, were forced to alight and make use of their own feet. When elderly gentlemen rode past whose attire, particularly the hat with broad brims, gave proof of special claims to perfection in the faith, all the tones of fury were extinguished, as if on command, in inextinguishable laughter. One of these gentlemen lost patience. He made, like Mephistopheles, an indecent gesture—he stuck his tongue out at the enemy

in reply. “He is a wordcatcher! a parliamentary man! He fights with his own weapons!” sounded from one side of the drive. “He is a Saint! He is psalm singing!” was the antistrophe from the other side. Meanwhile the metropolitan electric telegraph had announced to all police stations that a riot in Hyde Park was imminent, and had ordered them to the theatre of war. At short intervals, therefore, one police detachment after another marched through the double human espalier from Apsley House to Kensington Gardens, each time received with the popular song:

“Where are gone the geese?
Ask the police!”

with an allusion to a notorious goose theft perpetrated recently by a constable in Clerkenwell. This spectacle lasted three hours. Only English lungs are capable of such a parforce tour. During the performance one heard in the various groups: “This is only the beginning!” “This is the first step!” “We hate them” etc. While wrath could be read on the faces of the workers, we never before saw such a complacent, self-satisfied smile mirrored in the physiognomies of the middle classes. Shortly before the close, the vehemence of the demonstration intensified. Sticks were brandished against the carriages and the endless dissonance of sound found utterance in the cry: “You rascals!” (Ihr Schurken!) Eager male and female Chartists, during the three hours, penetrated the masses and distributed printed slips, on which was to be read in large letters: “Reorganisation of Chartism! A great public meeting will be held at the Literary and Scientific Institution, Friar Street, Doctor’s Commons, next Tuesday, June 26th, for the election of delegates to a conference for the reorganisation of Chartism in the capital. No tickets of admission.”

The London press today, on average, only brings a short report of the event in Hyde Park. No leading articles yet, with the exception of Lord Palmerston’s Morning Post. “A spectacle,” it says, “in the highest degree disgraceful and dangerous, has taken place in Hyde Park – an open violation of law and decency – an illegal interference, by physical force, with the free action of the legislative power. The scene must not be repeated next Sunday, as has been threatened.” At the same time, however, it declares the “fanatical” Lord Grosvenor to be the sole “responsible” author of the mischief and the challenger of the “righteous indignation of the people”! As if Parliament had not passed Lord Grosvenor’s Bill in three readings! Did he also, perchance, “influence the free action of the legislature by physical force”?