attempts of the people to do themselves justice on any future occasion when the cause may warrant it."[1]
The conduct of Shelburne during these riots, excited attacks against him similar to those of which he had been the object at the time of Dignam's plot. He was accused not only of having consented, but of having been an actual party to some of the excesses of the mob; and the fact of his being one of the few Peers who, on the evening of the 2nd of June, had reached the House of Lords without molestation, gave a colourable pretext for slanders, to which Judges on the Bench did not scruple by their language to give an importance which they otherwise would have lacked.[2] The natural explanation of the favour with which Shelburne was regarded by the Protestant mob lay in his being known, like Grafton, to hold, notwithstanding his advocacy of religious toleration, views respecting the Papal powers similar to those which had influenced the statesmen of the Revolution; but were now beginning to lose their force, with the altered policy of the Roman Curia, since the Pontificate of Ganganelli.[3]
"As to the suggestions," writes Dunning, "that the late disturbances have proceeded from or been in any degree countenanced by any man of rank or consequence in the country, and above all by any of those who have distinguished themselves as asserters of, or advocates for, the rights and liberties of the people in opposition to the weak and ruinous measures of the present Administration, whatever countenance those suggestions may have received from Judges or others who have condescended to be the scandalous instruments of Ministers in propagating them, they have been thrown out without proof or the semblance of proof, without probability, and it is no breach of charity to add, by men who have not themselves believed them or at least they would have been able to give them some colour; as the means of detecting and proving such practices, if they had existed, were in their hands, and
