{84

LIFE OF COBDRN,

fut:

1889. to discomfib a local magnate in the discussion which fo
a. 35. lowed, the permission which had been given to use the ba
on the next night was arbitrarily withdrawn, and the lecture’
were driven to say what they had come to say from a gig
the market-place. Nor was this the end of the adventure
As they were about to leave the town, they were served
with a warrant for causing an obstruction in a thoroughfare;
they were brought before the very magnate over whoo
they had won so fatal a victory, and by him punished with
a fine. At Stamford they were warned that the mob would
tear them to pieces; but they protected themselves with ®
body-guard, and the mob was discovered to be less hostil®
than a small band of people who ought to have deserved the
name of respectable. At Huntingdon the town clerk W3¢
the leader in provoking an outrageous disturbance, which
forced the lecturer to give up the ground. In the Duke
of Newcastle’s country, at Newark and at Retford, ther
was not an innkeeper who dared to let the lecturer a room;
and at Worksop, not only could the lecturer not find #
room, nor a printer who should dare to print a placard,
but he was assaulted by hired bullies in the street. - it
wag reserved for a seat of learning to show that 1°
brutality can equal that which is engendered of the union of
the violent inherited prejudice of the educated clagses, with
the high spirits of youth. No creature is a more unbridled
ruffian than the ruffian undergraduate can be, and at Cam”
bridge the peaceful arguments of the lecturer were inte™
rupted by a destructive and sanguinary riot. The Joos!
newspaper afterwards piously congratulated the furiou®
gownsmen on having done their duty as “the friends of
good government, and the upholders of the religion?
institutions of the country.” ?
It is only when people want to get something done that
7 Muy 14, 1839.