people were hurt in the
_melee_, of whom five in all died, either trampled to death on the spot,
or from the effects of their cudgelling; the meeting was scattered, and
some hundred of prisoners cast into gaol. A similar meeting had been
treated in the same way a few days before at a place called Manchester,
which has now disappeared. Thus the 'lesson' began. The whole country
was thrown into a ferment by this; meetings were held which attempted
some rough organisation for the holding of another meeting to retort on
the authorities. A huge crowd assembled in Trafalgar Square and the
neighbourhood (then a place of crowded streets), and was too big for the
bludgeon-armed police to cope with; there was a good deal of dry-blow
fighting; three or four of the people were killed, and half a score of
policemen were crushed to death in the throng, and the rest got away as
they could. This was a victory for the people as far as it went. The
next day all London (remember what it was in those days) was in a state
of turmoil. Many of the rich fled into the country; the executive got
together soldiery, but did not dare to use them; and the police could not
be massed in any one place, because riots or threats of riots were
everywhere. But in Manchester, where the people were not so courageous
or not so desperate as in London, several of the popular leaders were
arrested. In London a convention of leaders was got together from the
Federation of Combined Workmen, and sat under the old revolutionary name
of the Committee of Public Safety; but as they had no drilled and armed
body of men to direct, they attempted no aggressive measures, but only
placarded the walls with somewhat vague appeals to the workmen not to
allow themselves to be trampled upon. However, they called a meeting in
Trafalgar Square for the day fortnight of the last-mentioned skirmish.

"Meantime the town grew no quieter, and business came pretty much to an
end. The newspapers--then, as always hitherto, almost entirely in the
hands of the masters--clamoured to the Government for repressive
measures; the rich citizens were enrolled as an extra body of police, and
armed with bludgeons like them; many of these were strong, well-fed, full-
blooded young men, and had plenty of stomach for fighting; but the
Government did not dare to use them, and contented itself with getting
full powers voted to it by the Parliament for suppressing any revolt, and
bringing up more