red 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.

{211}

CHAPTER LVI.

TWO NEW MEN.

[Sidenote: 1780--The younger Pitt and Brinsley Sheridan]

The year 1780 that witnessed the Gordon riots welcomed into political
li