good-humour. When Burke, in
the course of a great oration, parodied Burgoyne's invitation to the
Indians to repair to the king's standard, the wit and satire of
it almost suffocated the Prime Minister, not with shame but with
laughter. His heart had long ceased to be in the matter, and everybody
knew that he only retained his post in obedience to the urgent
importunities of the king, whilst such colleagues as Rigby only clung
to their place because the salaries were endeared by long familiarity.
The general gloom was accidentally deepened by that hideous outbreak
of fanaticism and violence, which is known as the Lord George Gordon
Riots (June 1780). The Whigs, as having favoured the relaxation of
the laws against popery, were especially obnoxious to the mob. The
Government sent a guard of soldiers to protect Burke's house in
Charles Street, St. James's; but after he had removed the more
important of his papers, he insisted on the guard being despatched for
the protection of more important places, and he took shelter under the
roof of General Burgoyne. His excellent wife, according to a letter of
his brother, had "the firmness and sweetness of an angel; but why do
I say of an angel?--of a woman." Burke himself courageously walked
to and fro amid the raging crowds with firm composure, though the
experiment was full of peril. He describes the mob as being made up,
as London mobs generally are, rather of the unruly and dissolute than
of fanatical malignants, and he vehemently opposed any concessions by
Parliament to the spirit of intolerance which had first kindled the
blaze. All the letters of the time show that the outrages and alarms
of those days and nights, in which the capital seemed to be at the
mercy of a furious rabble, made a deeper impression on the minds of
contemporaries than they ought to have done. Burke was not likely to
be less excited than others by the sight of such insensate disorder;
and it is no idle fancy that he had the mobs of 1780 still in his
memory, when ten years later he poured out the vials of his wrath on
the bloodier mob which carried the King and Queen of France in wild
triumph from Versailles to Paris.

In the previous February (1780) Burke had achieved one of the greatest
of all his parliamentary and oratorical successes. Though the matter
of this particular enterprise is no longer alive, yet it illustrates
his many strong qualities in so remarkable a way that it is right to
give some a