THE PEOPLE’S “TRIBUNE”
The above verses are included in a piece I wrote in celebration of the trip. It was about this period I began to spend a good deal of time in writing doggerel and rhyme for publication in the local press. Many of my “efforts” took the form of satires upon defaulting gentlemen—men who, I thought, should be held up to public ridicule and censure. I placed myself at the service of the people, and was always ready to show up their wrongs under my motto, “Right against Might.” For my pains in that direction I was often boycotted, and occasionally brought before the magistrates. In the latter case, an indirect charge was invariably brought against me in order that certain individuals might take “revenge out of me.” But I flatter myself that I had as often a friend behind me to save me from “durance vile.” On one occasion I was hauled up for refusing to quit the old Crown Inn, Church Green. I had occasion to go to the place where, it seemed, there had been a row a few minutes previously; indeed, I met several men in the passage who had taken part in the row and were being turned out. I made my way forward and took a seat in the tap-room. Before I had been seated many minutes a policeman came in and charged me with refusing to quit the public-house when ordered to do so. I endeavoured to convince “Robert” that I had not taken part in the row, and that I had never been asked to quit; but I soon found what a hopeless task I had set myself in trying to “convince a policeman against his will.” On the following Friday I was hauled up before the magistrates. I defended myself as best I could, but was told by the presiding magistrate that I was nothing but an “impudent scoundrel.” However, the charge against me—preferred by a policeman, and supported by no other witness—was considered proved by the Bench, who mulcted me in a fine of 10s and costs. Greatly incensed at the verdict, but more especially at the manner in which the chairman of the Bench had “sat upon” me, I resolved to take a course of action at the expense of the gentleman mentioned. So the same afternoon, still smarting under a sense of having been unfairly dealt with, I set to work with my pen, and wrote a satire on the magistrate who took the most prominent part in dealing with my case. By the dinner hour on the following day (Saturday) I was in the market-place selling copies of the satire. People bought with avidity, and before Saturday went out I had disposed of a thousand copies at a penny each; which returns enabled me to pay the fine and then make profit out of my prosecution.