[416] The familiar way in which Pearson addressed members seems to have been generally condoned on account of his long service. Once when General Grant, who had boasted that he would march victoriously through America with three thousand men, asked the door-keeper how long a certain member would speak, Pearson replied, "As long, General, if he was allowed, as you would be in marching through and conquering America!" Pearson's "Political Dictionary," p. 10. Pearson's treatment of strangers was no less autocratic. He could not always be corrupted into finding room for them in the galleries unless he happened to take a fancy to the appearance of the visitors. "If a face or a manner did not please him," says his biographer, "gold could not bribe him into civility, much less to the favour of admission. One stranger might be modest and ingratiating; Pearson, like Thurlow, would only give him a silent contemptuous stare; another would be rude; Pearson would laugh at his rudeness, tell him the orator of the moment, and, perhaps, shove him in, although he had before refused dozens who were known to him."[417] [417] Ibid., p. 6. In the first year of Queen Victoria's reign a suggestion was made that the public should be admitted without orders of any kind. This idea was successfully opposed by Lord John Russell, who expressed a fear that in such circumstances the galleries would be filled with pickpockets and other objectionable persons. Prior to 1867 strangers sometimes hired substitutes to keep places for them in the crowd which thronged St. Stephen's Hall on the morning of a big debate. These representatives would arrive as early as 2.30 a.m., and, like the messenger boys in the _queue_ outside a modern theatre, wait patiently until the door was opened in the afternoon. In 1867 the system of balloting for seats in the Strangers' Gallery was first instituted. Members had long been in the habit of giving orders "to bearer," written on the backs of envelopes or any scraps of paper, which were freely forged and transferred from one visitor to another. Strangers who were armed with these gallery passes were now compelled to ballot for precedence, and though on important nights the number of disappointed applicants was great, visitors gained the advantage of not being kept waiting for hours on the chance of obtaining a seat. This system continued to obtain until the time of the Fenian scares, in 1885, when, owing to the fact that two strangers admitted to the Gallery on August 4th proved to be well-known dynamiters, the police became alarmed for the safety of the House. To prevent the recurrence of such an unwelcome visit it was ordered that all applications for admission should be made in writing to the Speaker's secretary. The signatures of the strangers applying for places could thus be verified by comparison with their signatures in the Gallery book.