466 1780 PROSECUTION OF THE LORD MAYOR. Ch. 24. jected him to a capital charge, his conduct, when under examination, shewed that he had lost even the rude, grotesque wit which sometimes glimmered amidst his absurdities. His demeanour is described as having been abject and imbecile. The Government paid him the compliment of sending him to the Tower under a strong military escort; but there was no longer any chance that the Protestant hero would be rescued from the grasp of the law. The House adjourned. Prosecution of the Lord Mayor. The House of Commons met on the eighth of June, but so little was the Royal proclamation and the order of the military authorities understood, that a doubt was raised whether the metropolis was not placed under martial law, and the ordinary functions of the constitution suspended. Under this impression the House adjourned until the nineteenth of the month, on which day the Lords were to resume their sittings. The resumption of business by the Courts of Law on the day after the riots had been quelled, would have been sufficient to discredit the idle notion which the Commons had countenanced. But public notice was issued denying the existence of martial law, and announcing that all persons charged with offences would be tried, with the usual forms, by the ordinary tribunals. The Lord Mayor was prosecuted by the Attorney-General for neglect of duty, and convicted. But Alderman Bull, who had seconded Lord George Gordon, and had taken an active part in SPEECH OF LORD MANSFIELD. organising the meetings for the purpose of overawing the Parliament was suffered to escape with impunity. The only city magistrate who shewed sense or spirit on this occasion, was Wilkes. He ordered the publisher of a seditious paper within his jurisdiction to be arrested, and afforded the military every assistance in his power. When Parliament re-assembled on the nineteenth of June, the late deplorable events were made the subject of a speech from the Throne, and copies of the recent proclamation were laid before both Houses by command. Some Lords, unmindful of the fact that the question had practically been reduced to an alternative between anarchy and order, were disposed to test the conduct of the Government in calling out the military force by some abstract theory of constitutional law. In the midst of this frivolous discussion, Lord Mansfield rose, and every eye was instantly fixed on the venerable magistrate, who always spoke with the highest authority, and whose appearance, on this day, was invested with a peculiar interest on account of the outrages which he had recently sustained, both in person and property, at the hands of a lawless mob. The Chief Justice, when giving an extra-judicial opinion on questions of constitutional law, was usually reserved almost to timidity; but, on this occasion, he spoke with precision and emphasis. A fine and touching allusion to the grievous loss which he had sustained, prefaced his speech, and conciliated the sympathy of all 467 Ch. 24. 1780 468 Ch. 24. 1780 CONSTITUTIONAL USE OF THE MILITARY POWER. his hearers. 'I speak,' he said, 'without having consulted books, for, indeed, I have no books to consult.' Then, with that lucid exposition, of which at the age of eighty, he was still, as he had ever been, an unrivalled master, he stated the law which justified the course that had been taken. The acts of the insurgents, he affirmed, were acts of treason and felony. Every man might, by the common law, and at the requisition of authority was bound, to assist in suppressing a riot, and, much more, to prevent acts of treason and felony committed in his sight. A soldier, by assuming the military character, did not divest himself of the privileges or duties of a citizen; and differed from no other man in respect of his right to interfere in the case of a felony or a breach of the peace. And, as the red coat of a soldier was no disqualification for discharging the duty of a citizen, so it would be no protection against the law of the land if he overstepped the line of that duty, or assumed any control over the actions of his fellow-citizens which the law did not allow. The Lord Chancellor expressed his concurrence in the law laid down by the Chief Justice; nor did any peer presume to question the accuracy of these great authorities. Lord Mansfield's opinion was accepted as decisive of the law, and has since been invariably acted upon without question. The employment of the military in civil commotions is, nevertheless, a measure of extreme severity; and nothing but the protection BURKE'S MOTION. of life and property can justify the employment of armed against unarmed men. The establishment of a regular police, and the recent extension of the force throughout the country, will, it is to be hoped and expected, enable the civil authorities in future to preserve the peace of their respective districts, without engaging the army in a service most distasteful to themselves, as well as most repugnant to the feelings of the English people. On 469 Ch. 24. 1780 testant Peti At the adjournment day of the Commons, the Great Progreat Protestant petition, as it had been called, tion. was appointed for consideration. The late events enabled the House to deal with this miserable record of ignorance and bigotry as it deserved. On the motion of Burke, which was made by previous concert with Lord North, five resolutions, vindicating the wisdom and justice of the late Toleration Act, and condemnatory of the misrepresentations which had led to the late tumults, were adopted without a division. the other hand, Sir George Savile, who had hitherto been honourably distinguished as the advocate of a humane and liberal policy towards the Roman Catholics, shewed a disposition to conciliate the popular prejudice upon this subject. He introduced a bill which, under the pretence of restraining Popish conversions, went to disqualify Catholics from keeping private schools, or taking Protestant children as apprentices. This paltry measure, which was more in the 470 Ch. 24 1780 CONDUCT OF LORD LOUGHBOROUGH. spirit of Lord George Gordon's petition, than in that of the legislation of 1778, passed the Commons, but was rejected by the more independent vote of the Upper House. With these proceedings terminated the last session of the Parliament, which was dissolved in the ensuing autumn. The rioters of June were tried in due course at the Old Bailey Session, a special commission being issued for the trial of those prisoners who were charged in the county of Surrey. Chief Justice De Grey, whose turn it would have been to preside in this Commission, took the opportunity of retiring from a post, which his declining health had for some time past made him desirous of relinquishing. The able and energetic Wedderburn now obtained the object of his ambition; and his parliamentary services, the loss of which deprived Lord North of the only efficient supporter in the House of Commons that remained to him, were rewarded with a peerage. The first duty which the new Chief Justice of the Common Pleas was required to discharge, was the trial of the Surrey rioters; but the conduct of Lord Loughborough on this occasion laid him open to the censure, that in his eagerness to vindicate the cause of order, he departed somewhat from the cold impartiality of an English judge. The accused persons, however, cannot be said to have suffered any prejudice. The trials were conducted with the patience and deliberation which, since the Revolution, have |