"hit out with their truncheons like savages who, having been under temporary control, were now at full liberty to break heads and cut open faces to their hearts' content. It mattered not to them whether the interloper had actively exerted himself to force an entrance, or whether he had been merely hurled in the irresistible crush of those who pressed behind. Wherever there was a skull to fracture, they did their best to fracture it; everybody was in their eyes an enemy to whom no mercy was to be shown. The mob was at first stunned by the vigour of the assault, but presently turned upon the aggressors and repaid blows with their kind--in the end inflicting as much punishment as they received." In any case the police attempt to prevent the people entering the park was futile, for although the more orderly passed on to the appointed meeting-place, in the course of half-an-hour many thousands gained admission through the openings made in the railings. At length, the police confessing themselves powerless, the military were called out and marched through the park. Lord Derby, in the House of Lords, asserted that altogether not less than 1400 yards of railings were pulled down, and complained loudly of the injury done to the flower-beds and other "property of the Crown;" but on this head a rather remarkable statement was made by Mr Cowper, M.P., formerly First Commissioner of the Works, who expressed himself against holding public meetings in the Park. Mr Cowper said that when the crowd (composed, according to the _Times_, of "London roughs") had "forced down the railings and made good their entrance to the Park, they abstained from injuring the flowers, and even in the heat and hurry of the disturbance, they frequently went round along the grass so as not to tread upon the flower-beds and borders." After all their prohibitions and precautions to prevent the people from holding orderly meeting and giving public expression to their opinion, backed too as they were by police and soldiers, the Government could only feebly say in the House that the measures they had taken had prevented "some part of the contemplated proceedings from taking place." They might also have truthfully added that these same measures had also brought about the destruction of the Park railings, and numerous broken heads, "proceedings" which were not "contemplated," at least, by the conveners of the meeting.