* * * * *
I have promised to say little about the Tenth of April, for indeed I have
no heart to do so. Every one of Mackaye's predictions came true. We had
arrayed against us, by our own folly, the very physical force to which we
had appealed. The dread of general plunder and outrage by the savages of
London, the national hatred of that French and Irish interference of which
we had boasted, armed against us thousands of special constables, who had
in the abstract little or no objection to our political opinions. The
practical common sense of England, whatever discontent it might feel with
the existing system, refused to let it be hurled rudely down, on the mere
chance of building up on its ruins something as yet untried, and even
undefined. Above all, the people would not rise. Whatever sympathy they had
with us, they did not care to show it. And then futility after futility
exposed itself. The meeting which was to have been counted by hundreds of
thousands, numbered hardly its tens of thousands; and of them a frightful
proportion were of those very rascal classes, against whom we ourselves had
offered to be sworn in as special constables.
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