regarded by the
Opposition in both Houses as a direct defiance, and the challenge was
promptly taken up both in and out of Parliament. It happened that at
this moment the ministry was extremely unpopular in the City; not,
indeed, on account of his hostility to Reform, but in consequence of the
recent introduction by the Home-secretary of a police force in London,
on the model of one which the Duke himself, when Irish Secretary, had
established in Dublin. The old watchmen had been so notoriously
inefficient that it might have been expected that the change would have
been hailed with universal approval and gratitude, but it met with a
very different reception. Many of the newspapers which had not yet
forgiven the passing of Catholic Emancipation made it a ground for the
strongest imputations on the Duke himself, some of them even going the
length of affirming that he aimed at the throne, and that the
organization of this new force was the means on which he reckoned for
the attainment of his object. No story is too gross for the credulity of
the populace. To hear of such a plot was to believe it; to believe it
was to resolve to defeat it; and at the beginning of November the
government received several warnings that a plan was in agitation to
raise a formidable riot on Lord Mayor's Day, when the King and the Duke
himself were expected to dine with the Lord Mayor. The Lord Mayor even
wrote to the Duke to suggest the prudence of his coming "strongly and
sufficiently guarded," and the result of this advice was certainly
strange. The Duke cared little enough about personal danger to himself,
but he regarded himself as specially bound by his office to watch over
the public tranquillity, and to do nothing that might be expected to
endanger it. He was at least equally solicitous that a new reign should
not open with a tumult which could in any way be regarded as an insult
to the King; and, under the influence of these feelings, he took the
responsibility of giving the King the unprecedented advice of abandoning
his intention of being present at the Guildhall banquet. Such a step had
an inevitable tendency to weaken the ministry still farther by the
comments which it provoked. Even his own brother, Lord Wellesley, did
not spare his sarcasms, pronouncing it "the boldest act of cowardice he
had ever heard of;" while the Reformers ascribed the unpopularity which
it confessed to the Duke's declaration against any kind or degree of
Ref