“The late Mr. O’Connell was in the habit of boasting that he could drive a coach-and-four through an Act of Parliament. The sympathizers with political discontent, or disturbance rather, in London, transcended the rhetorical flourish of _the_ agitator, _par excellence_, yesterday. They had been bragging at Convention for some time past that they would hold a meeting in Hyde Park, ‘the people’s Park,’ in the teeth of Mr. Ayrton and the Parks Regulation Bill,[53] and yesterday they carried out their threat. The day was the day consecrated to God’s worship, but these disciples of ‘the revolution’ held their demonstration all the same, evidently acting on the principle of the proverb ‘the better the day, the better the deed.’ The object of the gathering was to seek for the amnesty of the political prisoners (by political prisoners being understood sundry soldiers who had forsworn their allegiance to join a conspiracy against the Queen’s Government, and the lives of their own comrades), and various other culprits who, under the pretence of patriotism, had transgressed the laws that regulate the order of the community by acts of violence.” This led to twelve of the speakers being summoned to Marlborough Street Police Court, and one of them, a man named Bailey, was tried before the magistrate as a test of the whole, on Nov. 19, and fined 5_l._ or a month’s imprisonment, but it was agreed that a case should be stated, and taken to a higher Court, the other summonses being adjourned _sine die_. The Appeal came on at the Queen’s Bench, on Jan. 23, 1873, before three judges, who all concurred in affirming the conviction. The Treasury, to the very great disgust of the Fenian sympathizers, presented them with a bill of costs for 100_l._, but I do not know whether it was ever paid. The effect of licensing public meetings in Hyde Park has been to turn that place into a bear-garden on most Sundays during fine weather, and one-sided meetings, more or less orderly, have been held on almost every subject, social and political. Is there a strike, the strikers must needs go and bellow their grievances--be they cabmen, laundresses, bakers, or unemployed. What good they think can accrue from it, they themselves cannot answer. As to the Trades’ Unions who go there periodically, I fancy very few would go were it not to show their regalia, air their banners, and march to the sound of a brass band; while of late years it has become to very many a Sunday picnic, to which they and their wives go in brakes. Nay, sometimes they meddle with things wholly out of their sphere; as, for instance, the demonstration on the Eastern Question on Feb. 24, 1878, at which the following handbill was distributed:--