s had
written filthy verses, but the crowd cared no more for this than their
betters cared about the vices of Lord Sandwich. They made common cause
with one who was accidentally a more conspicuous sufferer. Wilkes was
quite right when he vowed that he was no Wilkite. The masses were
better than their leader. "Whenever the people have a feeling," Burke
once said, "they commonly are in the right: they sometimes mistake the
physician." Franklin, who was then in London, was of opinion that if
George III. had had a bad character, and John Wilkes a good one,
the latter might have turned the former out of the kingdom; for the
turbulence that began in street riots, at one time threatened to end
in revolt. The king himself was attacked with savage invective in
papers, of which it was said that no one in the previous century would
have dared to print any like them until Charles was fast locked up in
Carisbrooke Castle.

As is usual when the minds of those in power have been infected with
an arbitrary temper, the employment of military force to crush civil
disturbances became a familiar and favourite idea. The military, said
Lord Weymouth, in an elaborate letter which he addressed to the Surrey
magistrates, can never be employed to a more constitutional purpose
than in the support of the authority and dignity of the magistracy.
If the magistrate should be menaced, he is cautioned not to delay a
moment in calling for the aid of the military, and making use of them
effectually. The consequence of this bloody scroll, as Wilkes rightly
called it, was that shortly afterwards an affray occurred between the
crowd and the troops, in which some twenty people were killed and
wounded (May 10, 1768). On the following day, the Secretary of War,
Lord Barrington, wrote to the commanding officer, informing him that
the king highly approved of the conduct both of officers and men, and
wished that his gracious approbation of them should be communicated to
them.

Burke brought the matter before the House in a motion for a Committee
of Inquiry, supported by one of the most lucid and able of his minor
speeches. "If ever the time should come," he concluded, "when this
House shall be found prompt to execute and slow to inquire; ready
to punish the excesses of the people, and slow to listen to their
grievances; ready to grant supplies, and slow to examine the account;
ready to invest magistrates with large powers, and slow to inquire
into the exercise