Annie Besant eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 339 pages of information about Annie Besant.

Annie Besant eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 339 pages of information about Annie Besant.
as little violence as they could.  It was Mr. Erskine, the Deputy Serjeant-at-Arms, and his ushers, who showed the brutality; as Dr. Aveling wrote at the time:  “The police disliked their work, and, as brave men, had a sympathy for a brave man.  Their orders they obeyed rigidly.  This done, they were kindness itself.”  Gradually the crowd of petitioners grew and grew; angry murmurs were heard, for no news came from the House, and they loved “Charlie,” and were mostly north country men, sturdy and independent.  They thought they had a right to go into the lobby, and suddenly, with the impulse that will sway a crowd to a single action there was a roar, “Petition, petition, justice, justice,” and they surged up the steps, charging at the policemen who held the door.  Flashed into my mind my chief’s charge, his words, “I trust to you to keep them quiet,” and as the police sprang forward to meet the crowd I threw myself between them, with all the advantage of the position of the top of the steps that I had chosen, so that every man in the charging crowd saw me, and as they checked themselves in surprise I bade them stop for his sake, and keep for him the peace which he had bade us should not be broken.  I heard afterwards that as I sprang forward the police laughed—­they must have thought me a fool to face the rush of the charging men; but I knew his friends would never trample me down, and as the crowd stopped the laugh died out, and they drew back and left me my own way.

Sullenly the men drew back, mastering themselves with effort, reining in their wrath, still for his sake.  Ah! had I known what was going on inside, would I have kept his trust unbroken! and, as many a man said to me afterwards in northern towns, “Oh! if you had let us go we would have carried him into the House up to the Speaker’s chair.”  We heard a crash inside, and listened, and there was sound of breaking glass and splintering wood, and in a few minutes a messenger came to me:  “He is in Palace Yard.”  And we went thither and saw him standing, still and white, face set like marble, coat torn, motionless, as though carved in stone, facing the members’ door.  Now we know the whole shameful story:  how as that one man stood alone, on his way to claim his right, alone so that he could do no violence, fourteen men, said the Central News, police and ushers, flung themselves upon him, pushed and pulled him down the stairs, smashing in their violence the glass and wood of the passage door; how he struck no blow, but used only his great strength in passive resistance—­” Of all I have ever seen, I never saw one man struggle with ten like that,” said one of the chiefs, angrily disdainful of the wrong he was forced to do—­till they flung him out into Palace Yard.  An eye-witness thus reported the scene in the Press:  “The strong, broad, heavy, powerful frame of Mr. Bradlaugh was hard to move, with its every nerve and muscle strained to resist the coercion.  Bending and straining against the overpowering numbers, he held

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Annie Besant from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.