The speeches were stirring, and the keynote of almost every speaker was that as postal employés enjoyed the right of every citizen to petition Parliament, they had no need to fear the petty restrictions of red-tape; and this inalienable right should be their sheet anchor and their hope. At the same time the authorities were violently denounced for so meanly visiting their resentment on the leader Booth by suspending him without any assigned cause; and, as may be surmised, the most capital was made out of the incident, the action of the authorities being ascribed to his having dared to exercise his right as a free-born Englishman; in which, on the whole, the speakers were probably not far wrong. Mr. M. C. Torrens, M.P., and other well-known friends of the movement graced the platform, and formed the necessary firing party. All the speaking from the platform was done by the public friends and sympathisers; the postal employés themselves significantly remaining dumb. They had not yet the right of free speech, though they had asserted the liberty of holding a public meeting in this fashion; that was to be tested later on. The public press noticed the meeting at some length; and it acted as a splendid advertisement for the postal claims. The next day Booth was ordered back to the Chief Office, not, however, to receive his sentence of dismissal as was surmised, but to be restored to duty without suffering the loss of pay usual in such circumstances.
For the purpose of discussing ways and means of raising funds to keep the fire going and sustaining the enthusiasm of the men, there were also one or two meetings held at a little hall known as the Albion Hall, conveniently situated in London Wall, near to the General Post-Office. Mr. George Potter took the chair, and Sir John Bennett, of Cheapside fame, ably supported.
Sir John Bennett had proved himself one of the staunchest and most industrious of their numerous public friends at this period. He had an especial liking for the postmen, and any one of them in uniform could purchase a three-guinea watch at his shop at something like thirty-five per cent. discount. But they were doomed to lose him in a somewhat peculiar manner. The postal volunteer corps, the then 49th Middlesex, had been formed on the occasion of the Fenian scare of 1868; and during a recurrence of a similar alarm from the same causes, a number of the postmen and others joined the corps in a body. Sir John Bennett was peculiar in his views of postal patriotism, and dropped the postmen and their agitation from that moment.