and the apprehension of the bad use which
they might make of their new power, can be traced to certain incidents
which happened just before they were admitted to the Franchise and which
perhaps precipitated their admission. In June, 1866, the Reform Bill,
for which Lord Russell and Mr. Gladstone were responsible, was defeated
in the House of Commons, and the Tories came into office. The defeated
Bill would have enfranchised the upper class of artisans, and its
rejection led to considerable riots, in which certain leaders of the
working-men played conspicuous parts. The mob carried all before it, and
the railings of Hyde Park were broken. The Tory Government behaved with
the most incredible feebleness. The Home Secretary shed tears. The whole
business, half scandalous and half ridiculous, furnished Arnold with an
illustration for his sermon on "Doing What One Likes." Reviewing, three
years after their occurrence, the events of July, 1866, he wrote thus:
"Everyone remembers the virtuous Alderman-Colonel or Colonel-Alderman,
who had to lead his militia through the London streets; how the
bystanders gathered to see him pass; how the London roughs, asserting an
Englishman's best and most blissful right of doing what he likes, robbed
and beat the bystanders; and how the blameless warrior-magistrate
refused to let his troops interfere. 'The crowd,' he touchingly said
afterwards, 'was mostly composed of fine, healthy, strong men, bent on
mischief; if he had allowed his soldiers to interfere, they might have
been overpowered, their rifles taken from them and used against them by
the mob; a riot, in fact, might have ensued, and been attended with
bloodshed, compared with which the assaults and loss of property that
actually occurred would have been as nothing.' Honest and affecting
testimony of the English Middle Class to its own inadequacy for the
authoritative part which one's convictions would sometimes incline one
to assign to it! 'Who are we?' they say by the voice of their
Alderman-Colonel, 'that we should not be overpowered if we attempt to
cope with social anarchy, our rifles taken from us and used against us
by the mob, and we, perhaps, robbed and beaten ourselves? Or what light
have we, beyond a freeborn Englishman's impulse to do as he likes, which
would justify us in preventing, at the cost of bloodshed, other freeborn
Englishmen from doing as they like, and robbing and beating as much as
they please?' And again, 'the R