[Sidenote: 1780—Stern action by the authorities]
That nothing even approaching to this did happen was largely due to the courage and the determination of the Sovereign. The Administration vacillated. The Privy Council, facing an agitation of whose extent and popularity it was unaware, feared to commit itself. George felt no such fear. Where authority fell back paralyzed in the presence of a new, unknown, and daily increasing peril, he came forward and asserted himself after a fashion worthy of a king. If the Privy Council would not act with him, then he would act without them. He would lead out his Guards himself and charge the rioters at their head. The courage which had shown itself at Dettingen, the courage which had been displayed by generations of rough German {207} electors and Italian princes, showed itself gallantly now and saved the city. The King lamented the weakness of the magistrates, but at least there was one, he said, who would do his duty, and he touched his breast with his hand. George the Third is not a heroic figure in history, but just at that moment he bore himself with a royal honor which ranked him with Leonidas or Horatius. If there are to be kings at all, that is how kings ought to behave. George was fortunate in finding a man to stand by him and to lend to his soldierly courage the support of the law. Wedderburn, the Attorney-General, declared, with all the authority of his high position, that in cases where the civil power was unable to restrain arson and outrage, it was the duty of all persons, civil as well as military, to use all means in their power to deal with the danger. The reading of the Riot Act was nugatory in such exceptional conditions, and it became the duty of the military to attack the rioters. Thus supported, the King ordered Wedderburn to write at once to Lord Amherst, the Commander-in-Chief, authorizing him to employ the military without waiting for authority from the civil powers. Wedderburn, who in a few days was to become Chief Justice and Lord Loughborough, wrote the order, kneeling upon one knee at the council table, and from that moment the enemy was grappled with in grim earnest.
It was high time. No less than two unsuccessful attacks had been made during that day upon the Bank of England, but precautions had been taken, and the successes of Newgate were not repeated in Threadneedle Street. The assailants were repulsed on each occasion by the military, who occupied every avenue leading to the Bank. Had the attack upon the Bank succeeded it is impossible to form any estimate of what the result might have been. But it failed, and with that failure the whole hideous agitation failed as well. But the crowning horror of the whole episode was reserved for that final day of danger. In Holborn, where riot raged fiercest, stood the distilleries of Mr. Langdale, a wealthy Roman Catholic. The distilleries were attacked and fired. Rivers of spirit ran in all the {208} conduits and blazed as they ran. Men, drunk with liquor and maddened with excitement, kneeled to drink, and, drinking, fell and died where they lay. By this time the soldiers were acting vigorously, driving the rabble before them, shooting all who resisted, as some did resist desperately. The fire that had grown during the week was quenched at last in blood. On the Thursday morning London was safe, comparatively quiet, almost itself again. The shops indeed were still closed, but mutiny had lived its life. There was a short, sharp struggle during the day in Fleet Street, between some of the fanatics and the Guards, which was stamped out by repeated bayonet charges which killed and wounded many. Everywhere were blackened spaces, smouldering ruins, stains of blood, and broken weapons, everywhere the signs of outrage and of conflict. But the incendiary fires were quenched and with them the fire of insurrection. The riots were at an end. The one wish of every one was to obliterate their memory as speedily as might be. The stains of blood were quickly removed from the walls of the Bank of England, from the roadway of Blackfriars Bridge. The marks of musket shots were swiftly effaced from the scarred buildings.
[Sidenote: 1780—Suppression of the Gordon Riots]
It was never fully known how far the rioters themselves suffered in the suppression of the disorder. The official returns give lists of 285 direct deaths, and of 173 cases of serious wounds in the hospitals. But this can only represent a small proportion of the actual casualties. Many dead, many wounded, must have been carried away by friends and hidden in hurried graves, or nursed in secret to recovery. Many, too, perished at Blackfriars Bridge, or were hideously consumed in the flames that rose from the burning of Langdale's distilleries. But if the number of those who suffered remains an unknown quantity, it is not difficult to approximate to the destructive power of the disturbances. The cost of the whole bad business has been estimated at at least 180,000 pounds. To that amount an imbecile insanity had despoiled London. But the imbecile insanity had incurred a deeper debt. In the wild trials that followed upon the panic and the violence forty-nine {209} men were condemned to death for their share in the riot, and twenty-nine of these actually suffered the last penalty of the law. It was not, in the eyes of some, a heavy sacrifice to pay. It did not seem a heavy sacrifice in the eyes of John Wilkes, who declared that if he were intrusted with sovereign power not a single rioter should be left alive to boast of, or to plead for forgiveness for, his offence. But Lord George Gordon was not worth the life of one man, not to speak of nine-and-twenty.
The folly of the Administration did not end with their victory. On the 9th they did what they ought to have done long before, and arrested Lord George Gordon. But even this necessary belated act of justice they performed in the most foolish fashion. Everything that the pomp and ceremonial of arrest and arraignment could do was done to exalt Lord George in the eyes of the mob and swell his importance. He was conveyed to the Tower of London. Though the rising was thoroughly stamped out, and there was practically no chance of any attempt being made to rescue the prisoner, Lord George was escorted to the Tower by a numerous military force in broad daylight, with an amount of display that gave him the dignity of a hero and a martyr. To add to the absurdity of the whole business, the poor crazy gentleman was solemnly tried for high treason. Many months later, in the early February of the next year, 1781, when the riots were a thing of the past, and their terrible memory had been largely effaced, George Gordon was brought to the Bar of the Court of King's Bench for his trial. His wits had not mended during his confinement. He had been very angry because he thought that he was prevented from seeing his friends. His anger deepened when he learned that no friends had desired to see him. The fanatic had served his turn, and was forgotten. He was not of that temper which makes men devoted to a leader. He was but the foolish figurehead of a fanatical outburst, and when he was set aside he was forgotten. But when he was brought up for trial a measure of popular enthusiasm in the man reasserted itself. He behaved very strangely at his trial, urging his right to read {210} long passages of Scripture in his defence. Happily for him, his defence was managed by abler hands than his own. The genius of Erskine, the gifts of Kenyon, were expended in his behalf. The unwisdom of the Government in prosecuting him for high treason was soon apparent. He was acquitted, to the general satisfaction of his supporters, and of many who were not his supporters. If public thanksgiving were returned in several churches for his acquittal, one grave manly voice was uplifted to swell the approval. Dr. Johnson declared that he was far better pleased that Lord George Gordon should escape punishment than that a precedent should be established for hanging a man for constructive treason.
Thus the great Gordon riots flickered ignominiously out. Lord George made occasional desperate efforts to reassert himself, trying to force himself upon the notice of the King at St. James's. In 1787 he was found guilty of libels upon the Queen of France and the French Ambassador. He fled to Holland, where he was arrested by the Dutch authorities, and shipped back to England. He was committed to Newgate, by curious chance, on the anniversary of the day on which it had been burned by his followers. In Newgate he lived for some years, adjuring Christianity, and declaring himself to be a follower of the Jewish faith. In Newgate the fanatic, renegade, madman, died of jail distemper on November 1, 1793. He was only forty-two years old. In his short, unhappy life he had done a great deal of harm, and, as far as it is possible to judge, no good whatever. Perhaps the example of the Gordon riots served as a precedent in another land. If the news of the fall of the Bastille and the September massacres reached Lord George Gordon in his prison, he may have recalled to his crazed fancy the fall of Newgate and the bloody Wednesday of the June of 1780.
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