' The
remembrance of these cases was perhaps the cause of the feebleness shewn
in the Gordon Riots in June 1780. Dr. Franklin wrote from London on May
14, 1768 (_Memoirs_, iii. 315):--'Even this capital is now a daily scene
of lawless riot. Mobs patrolling the streets at noon-day, some knocking
all down that will not roar for Wilkes and liberty; courts of justice
afraid to give judgment against him; coal-heavers and porters pulling
down the houses of coal-merchants that refuse to give them more wages;
sawyers destroying saw-mills; sailors unrigging all the outward-bound
ships, and suffering none to sail till merchants agree to raise their
pay; watermen destroying private boats, and threatening bridges;
soldiers firing among the mobs and killing men, women, and children.'
'While I am writing,' he adds (_ib_. p. 316), 'a great mob of
coal-porters fill the street, carrying a wretch of their business upon
poles to be ducked for working at the old wages.' See also _ib_. p. 402.
Hume agreed with Johnson about the 'imbecility' of the government; but
he drew from it different conclusions. He wrote on Oct. 27, 1775, about
the addresses to the King:--'I wish they would advise him first to
punish those insolent rascals in London and Middlesex, who daily insult
him and the whole legislature, before he thinks of America.
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