ers are admitted. The marshals and stewards who are not told off
for guarding the platform are distributed over the ground which the
meeting is to occupy, and act as guardians of order.

The Hyde Park meeting against the royal grant was a thoroughly successful
one, and a large number of protests came up from all parts of the
country. Being from the poorer classes, they were of course disregarded,
but none the less was a strong agitation against royal grants carried on
throughout the autumn and winter months. The National Secular Society
determined to gather signatures to a "monster petition against royal
grants", and the superintendence of this was placed in my hands. The
petition was drafted by Mr. Bradlaugh, and ran as follows:--

"TO THE HONORABLE THE COMMONS OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND, IN PARLIAMENT
ASSEMBLED.

"The humble petition of the undersigned,

"Prays,--That no further grant or allowance may be made to any member of
the Royal Family until an account shall have been laid before your
Honorable House, showing the total real and personal estates and incomes
of each and every member of the said Royal Family who shall be in receipt
of any pension or allowance, and also showing all posts and places of
profit severally held by members of the said Royal Family, and also
showing all pensions, if any, formerly charged on any estates now enjoyed
by any member or members of the said Royal Family, and in case any such
pensions shall have been transferred, showing how and at what date such
transfer took place."

Day after day, week after week, month after month, the postman delivered
rolls of paper, little and big, each roll containing names and addresses
of men and woman who protested against the waste of public money on our
greedy and never-satisfied Royal House. The sheets often bore the marks
of the places to which they had been carried; from a mining district some
would come coal-dust-blackened, which had been signed in the mines by
workers who grudged to idleness the fruits of toil; from an agricultural
district the sheets bore often far too many "crosses", the "marks" of
those whom Church and landlord had left in ignorance, regarding them only
as machines for sowing and reaping. From September, 1875, to March, 1876,
they came in steady stream, and each was added to the ever-lengthening
roll which lay in one corner of my sitting-room and which assumed ever
larger and larger proportions. At last the work was ove