ant for the single offence of being a Frenchman.
But the brutalities of the mob were not limited to strangers. The
citizens of London fared almost as badly if not quite as badly as any
Frenchman could do. Fielding gives a picture in one of his essays of
the lawless arrogance which was characteristic of the rabble. He gave
to the mob the title of the Fourth Estate in an article in the _Covent
Garden Journal_ for June 13, 1752, and in another article a week later
he painted an ironical picture of the brutal manners and overbearing
demeanor of the mob. "A gentleman," he wrote, "may go a voyage at sea
with little more hazard than he can travel ten miles from the
metropolis." On the river, on the streets, on the highways, according
to Fielding, mob manners prevailed, and brutal language might at any
moment be followed by brutal actions. When the largest allowance is
made for the exaggeration of the satirist, enough remains to show that
the condition of London in the second half of the eighteenth century
was disorderly in the extreme. People who ventured on the Thames were
liable to the foulest insults, and even to be run down by those who
were pleased to regard the stream as their appanage, and who resented
the appearance on it of any who seemed better dressed than themselves.
Women of fashion were liable to be hustled, mobbed, insulted if they
ventured in St. James's Park on a Sunday evening. No one could walk
the streets by day without the probability of being annoyed, or by
night without the risk of {124} being knocked down. After painting his
grim picture in the Hogarth manner, Fielding concluded grimly that he
must observe "that there are two sorts of persons of whom this fourth
estate do yet stand in some awe, and whom, consequently, they have in
great abhorrence: these are a justice of the peace and a soldier. To
these two it is entirely owing that they have not long since rooted all
the other orders out of the commonwealth."

[Sidenote: 1769--Wilkes's expulsion from the Commons]

The Government hoped that the longer Wilkes lay in prison, the more
chance there was that the enthusiasm for him would abate. But in this
hope the Government were disappointed. Even in the ranks of the
ministers the King was not able to find unswerving agreement to his
demands for Wilkes's expulsion from Parliament. Outside Parliament the
agitation was not only undiminished, but was even on the increase.
This was shown conclusi