pushing their demands in
some way or other.
    Of course, this editor was immediately arrested by the military power; but
his bold words were already in the hands of the public, and produced a great
effect: so great an effect that the Government, after some vacillation, withdrew
the state of siege; though at the same time it strengthened the military
organisation and made it more stringent. Three of the Committee of Public Safety
had been slain in Trafalgar Square: of the rest, the greater part went back to
their old place of meeting, and there awaited the event calmly. They were
arrested there on the Monday morning, and would have been shot at once by the
general, who was a mere military machine, if the Government had not shrunk
before the responsibility of killing men without any trial. There was at first a
talk of trying them by a special commission of judges, as it was called - i.e.,
before a set of men bound to find them guilty, and whose business it was to do
so. But with the Government the cold fit had succeeded to the hot one; and the
prisoners were brought before a jury at the assizes. There a fresh blow awaited
the Government; for in spite of the judge's charge, which distinctly instructed
the jury to find the prisoners guilty, they were acquitted, and the jury added
to their verdict a presentment, in which they condemned the action of the
soldiery, in the queer phraseology of the day, as rash, unfortunate, and
unnecessary. The Committee of Public Safety renewed its sittings, and from
thenceforth was a popular rallying-point in opposition to the Parliament. The
Government now gave way on all sides, and made a show of yielding to the demands
of the people, though there was a widespread plot for effecting a coup d'état -
set on foot between the leaders of the two so-called opposing parties in the
parliamentary faction fight. The well-meaning part of the public was overjoyed,
and thought that all danger of a civil war was over. The victory of the people
was celebrated by huge meetings held in the parks and elsewhere, in memory of
the victims of the great massacre.
    But the measures passed for the relief of the workers, though to the upper
classes they seemed ruinously revolutionary, were not thorough enough to give
the people food and a decent life, and they had to be supplemented by unwritten
enactments without legality to back them. Although the Government and Parliament
had the law-courts, the army, and society at their backs, the Committee of
Public