If any one considered that King George's ministers were cowards who had lost their heads, he was seriously mistaken. These gentlemen, with truly British phlegm, listened to the cries of "Death!" raised against them much in the spirit that Fielding, playing besique behind the scenes of Drury Lane, lent one ear to the public hissing his plays. The recital of an eye-witness describes some strange pranks during the sittings of the Council. He affirms that there was more claret discussed than resolutions.
"Though I," said Lord North, indicating his colleague with pretended terror, "go about armed to the teeth, I am more afraid of Saint John's pistol than anything else!" Thereupon they ascended to the roof of the house. Thence they observed the conflagration, noted its phases and progress, and exchanged conjectures upon the direction of the wind and upon its probable effects.
"And now, gentlemen," concluded the minister, "let us return and finish our wine."
This government, discredited on account of its external showing, cared not to assume the odium of an energetic repression. Curious as it may seem, it was upon the opposition that it sought to shift the responsibility. It was said that Lord North held an interview with Fox in the lobby of Drury Lane Theatre. A plenary reunion of the Privy Council was held under the presidence of the king, which only occurs at serious crises and in times of great peril to the monarchy. The judges were convoked in order to pass their opinions upon the course of procedure to be pursued and to give their advice upon the legal side of the question. It was Burke, the great Liberal orator, who proposed to proclaim the martial law.
In fact, the most alarming tidings were received hour by hour. The Fleet and Newgate prisons had been forced, and had vomited their prisoners upon the pavements of London. At Rag Fair and similar localities the orgy was at its height, the license of the mob unbridled. It was no longer a question of papism and tolerance: it was a social revolution, greatest of all misfortunes, which had begun; it was the subversion of law, the accession of crime. It was reported that a formidable army was forming for the assault of the Bank of England. Inasmuch as the bank was the vital centre, the very heart of the country, the ministers awoke from their lethargy. As if by enchantment several regiments entered London from all sides and encamped with their cannon in Hyde Park. A plan had been decided upon for the total annihilation of the revolt. Lord Amherst mounted his horse, and when by the ruddy light of the conflagration the aged courtier was seen advancing it was generally understood that that class of society, until now so disdainfully indulgent, had taken a hand, and would show itself pitiless in the defence of its property and life. Soon the firing resounded far and wide,—at Blackfriars, at Saint George's Fields, near the Mansion House; the victims lay about in heaps, while the Thames received many corpses and more than one living sacrifice.
On that terrible night, during which the horrors of civil war were added to those of incendiarism, while so many men animated by the spirit of vengeance and the hope of pillage rushed upon one another, a little band of kind-hearted folk, moved by so much suffering, patrolled the streets, bearing relief to the victims. It was Levet, the surgeon of the poor, who urged them on, and case in hand led that dangerous campaign in the interest of humanity.
As he trudged along Cheapside with his troop, who carried the litters and ladders, he recognized Francis Monday walking in the opposite direction, and called out to him,—
"Is that you, Frank?"
The young man quickly raised his head, perceiving his former savior, whom he frequently went to see and for whom he cherished a grateful friendship.