the cause of liberty,
called upon Dundas to bring in his relief measure for Scotland. When
Dundas declared that it was better to delay the measure until cooler
judgment might prevail, Wilkes denounced him for allowing Parliament to
truckle to riot, and the denunciation found support in the actions of
Burke and of Fox. Lord George Gordon had found his opportunity. He
assailed Fox; he assailed Burke. He declared that every non-Catholic
in Scotland was ready to rise in arms against Catholic relief, and that
the rebels had chosen him for their leader. He raged and vapored and
threatened on the floor of the House. But he did more than rage and
vapor and threaten. Whether of his own motion, or prompted by others,
he formed a "Protestant Association" in England. Of this, as of the
similar Scottish Association, he was declared the head, and this
accumulation of honors wholly overthrew his intelligence. An amiable
writer has declared that "it would be much beneath the dignity of
history to record the excesses of so coarse a fanatic but for the fatal
consequences with which they were attended." The amiable defender of a
detestable phrase does not understand that it was the excesses of the
fanatic that led to the fatal consequences, and that Lord George
Gordon, as the ostensible head and conspicuous cause of one of the
gravest events of the history of England in the eighteenth century, is
in no sense beneath the "dignity of history." The business of history
is with him and with such as he, as well as with the statelier,
austerer figures who sanely shape the destinies of the State. There
was plenty of fanaticism abroad in England; it was reserved for Lord
George Gordon to bring it together into {196} a single body, to
organize it, and to employ its force with a terrible if temporary
success. He issued an insane proclamation calling upon men to unite
against Catholicism; he held a great meeting of the Protestant
Association at Coachmakers' Hall, at which with a kind of
Bedlamite-brilliancy he raved against Catholicism and lashed the
passions of his hearers to delirium. It was resolved to hold a huge
meeting of the Protestant Association in St. George's Fields on June 2.
At its head Lord George Gordon was to proceed to the House of Commons
and deliver the petition against Catholic relief. All stanch
Protestants were to wear blue cockades in their hats to mark out the
faithful from the unfaithful.

[Sidenote: 1780--Th