local bodies to be a direct incitement to
violence; further, it will hold Mr. G. W. E. Russell and the
members of the Government, individually and collectively, guilty of
the murder of those who may die in the next few weeks, and whose
lives would have been saved had the suggestion of the deputation
been acted on.

(Signed) JOHN BURNS, _Engineer_.
JOHN E. WILLIAMS, _Labourer_.
WILLIAM HENRY, _Foreman_.
JAMES MACDONALD, _Tailor_."

The threats with which the leaders of the Unemployed regaled us derived
a pleasing actuality from the fact that on the 24th of January
simultaneous explosions had occurred at the Tower and in the House of
Commons. I did not see the destruction at the Tower, but I went straight
across from my office to the House of Commons, and saw a curious
object-lesson in scientific Fenianism. In Westminster Hall there was a
hole in the pavement six feet wide, and another in the roof. I had
scarcely done examining these phenomena when another crash shook the
whole building, and we found that an infernal machine had been exploded
in the House of Commons, tearing the doors off their hinges, wrecking
the galleries, and smashing the Treasury Bench into matchwood. The
French Ambassador, M. Waddington, entered the House with me, and for a
while stood silent and amazed. At length he said, "There's no other
country in the world where this could happen." Certainly it must be
admitted that at that moment our detective organization was not at its
best.

However, neither mock-heroics nor actual outrage could obscure the fact
that during the spring of 1885 there Was an immense amount of
unemployment, and consequent suffering, among the unskilled labourers. I
suggested that we should issue from the Local Government Board a
Circular Letter to all the Local Authorities in London, asking them, not
to invent work, but to push forward works which, owing to the rapid
extension of London into the suburbs, were becoming absolutely
necessary. But the President of the Board, a bond slave of Political
Economy, would not sanction even this very mild departure from the
precepts of the Dismal Science. The distress was peculiarly acute at the
Docks, where work is precarious and uncertain in the highest degree.
Some well-meaning people at the West End instituted a plan of "Free
Breakfasts" to be served at the Dock-Gates to men who h