In Hyde Park - February 13, 1888

Image::1 "Justice, Justice! One penny. Shows you how to get rid of all landlords and capitalists" was the appropriate cry that fell upon one's ear when joining the huge crowd assembling round the platform erected beneath the Reformer's Tree for the reception of T. D. Sullivan and Edward Harrington, two of Balfour's criminals. In spite of the nipping east wind and threatening snow-clouds, their London sympathizers poured into the park in vast numbers, and when those attending the procession came up there must have been at least fifty thousand good men and true.

The chance words heard whilst waiting for the heroes of the hour were instructive and portentous. To the right stood a sturdy workman propounding the doctrine of Socialism as it seemed unto him. Some high church dignitary was his text, and he strove to make clear to his auditors the iniquity of a man who pocketed L10,000 a year minus a paltry L90 which went to pay a " miserable curate " for doing the work the bishop ought to do, but didn't. " Aye, Aye." chimed in a comrade, they're a bad lot. You may be sure you're in the right, whenever the clergy are again' you." Then another took up the parable in a lighter vein, entertaining his bearers with his views concerning the royal squabble over the payment, or rather nonpayment of certain Jubilee traveling expenses, and the meanness of German personages who had to come to England to get a square meal, etc., etc. At last the noise of fife and drum was heard in the distance, and the long procession of vehicles and banners slowly drew up to the meeting-place and encircled the vast crowd. Cheers of recognition greeted each well-known man as be appeared on the platform, winding up with a perfect salvo of applause when T. D. Sullivan came in sight. An address of welcome, and sympathy having been read, and two or three speakers having expressed similar feelings, Sullivan began to speak, his clear, sonorous voice being heard distinctly by every one present,. It was a speech worth remembering, if but for one point. Having thanked in glowing terms the English working-men for thus demonstrating their sympathy with Ireland's oppressed peasantry, he pledged his nation to stand of by the English working-classes in the approaching day of their great social struggle. This was what we went out to hear-this solemn I ledge of union between the people's of England and Ireland, a union to be formed by their common resistance to class oppression, which may be calculated to outlast that paper one, which has hitherto been the only tie between the two nations.

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Freedom: A Journal of Anarchist Socialism
Vol. 2 -- No. 18,
MARCH, 1888
Source: http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/journals/freedom/freedom2_18.html