the Royal Family until an account shall have been laid before your
Honorable House, showing the total real and personal estates and incomes
of each and every member of the said Royal Family who shall be in receipt
of any pension or allowance, and also showing all posts and places of
profit severally held by members of the said Royal Family, and also
showing all pensions, if any, formerly charged on any estates now enjoyed
by any member or members of the said Royal Family, and in case any such
pensions shall have been transferred, showing how and at what date such
transfer took place."

Day after day, week after week, month after month, the postman delivered
rolls of paper, little and big, each roll containing names and addresses
of men and woman who protested against the waste of public money on our
greedy and never-satisfied Royal House. The sheets often bore the marks
of the places to which they had been carried; from a mining district some
would come coal-dust-blackened, which had been signed in the mines by
workers who grudged to idleness the fruits of toil; from an agricultural
district the sheets bore often far too many "crosses", the "marks" of
those whom Church and landlord had left in ignorance, regarding them only
as machines for sowing and reaping. From September, 1875, to March, 1876,
they came in steady stream, and each was added to the ever-lengthening
roll which lay in one corner of my sitting-room and which assumed ever
larger and larger proportions. At last the work was over, and on June
16th, 1876, the "monster"--rolled on a mahogany pole presented by a
London friend, and encased in American cloth--was placed in a carriage to
be conveyed to the House of Commons; the heading ran: "The petition of
the undersigned Charles Bradlaugh, Annie Besant, Charles Watts, and
102,934 others". Unrolled, it was nearly a mile in length, and a very
happy time we had in rolling the last few hundred yards. When we arrived
at the House, Mr. Bradlaugh and Mr. Watts carried the petition up