Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/594

ÆT. 53] diæval England' to a good audience here in the evening: lecture rather 'young'.

"Monday, Council meeting very quiet and short.... In the afternoon Bax called with Champion, who thinks of starting a new weekly, a private paper not so much a party journal as Commonweal, and bigger, as he is to be backed by money. He wanted my goodwill, which he is welcome to; but I distrust the long endurance of a paper at all commercial, unless there is plenty of money at its back. Champion spoke in a friendly way and was quite open and reasonable; but seems out of spirits about the movement: he has been extremely over-sanguine about getting people to 'show their strength,' which of course they won't do at present, as soon as it looks dangerous, and so he is correspondingly depressed at the poor performance of the Social Democratic Federation in agitation lately.

"Next Sunday they are going to have a 'Church-parade,' at St. Paul's: but unless they can get an enormous crowd, it will be a silly business, and if they do there will be a row; which got up in this way I think a mistake; take this for my word about the sort of thing: if a riot is quite spontaneous it does frighten the bourgeois even if it [is] but isolated; but planned riots or shows of force are no good unless in a time of action, when they are backed by the opinion of the people and are in point of fact indications of the rising tide....

"Feb. 23rd. I had a sort of threat of gout the last days of last week, so kept myself quiet at home.

"Sunday for same reason I did not speak out of doors. I went to Mitcham (the branch) on Sunday evening and spoke extemporary to them at their clubroom, a tumble-down shed opposite the grand new workhouse built by the Holborn Union: amongst the