A tourist who wishes to see ‘the most characteristic’ sight in London should go to Marble Arch in Hyde Park on a Sunday. In all weathers – whether it is pouring with rain, or the season of yellow and black fogs, or in summer heat – from three in the afternoon, a tourist will find a large crowd gathered here to listen to the speakers. Some of them stand under banners embroidered with devices and have collected about themselves a sizeable audience; others have simply climbed onto the railings and are speaking ‘into empty space’. There is no-one listening to them, but the orators are not discomfited by this – they keep on speaking. Now one passer-by has stopped, then another, and soon a crowd coalesces around the speaker. It listens attentively; occasionally someone interjects a comment. If the orator does not speak with conviction, no-one will listen to him at all. Sometimes, the speaker's words arouse a profound interest – then the audience breaks up into a dozen groups, each centred around some ‘scribe’ who voluntarily takes upon himself the duties of a commentator. And the kinds of people you can see in that crowd! A workman, wearing his Sunday best, a soldier in his operetta-style red uniform, with a swagger stick under his arm (English soldiers are prohibited from carrying arms in the street), a sailor and his ‘sweetheart’ in her garish feathers, hand-in-hand, a clerk in a glossy top hat, a stern Dissenting pastor, and so on. The English set great store by their open assemblies: they have paid very dearly for their right to free speech. To this end, it is instructive to peruse the recently published ‘Life’ of the late Richard Carlile. As little as sixty years ago, a speech in Hyde Park could land you in prison for three years.

Even more curious than the orators themselves are the topics on which they speak in Hyde Park. One speaker denounces the latest government bill with figures at his fingertips; another explains how necessary the higher forms of industry are for England. Under one tree, a speaker expounds the meaning of surplus value, while next to him lectures a ‘Neo-Malthusian’ or a ‘Secularist’ or George Gaspari, who every Sunday for thirty years now has been explaining to the public what true ‘humanitarianism’ is and what are its benefits.