is no Englishman so ignorant or so uninformed as to need to be reminded that there is some difference between associating to support the Constitution or to overturn it."[1]
The conduct of Shelburne has been impugned long subsequently to the riots themselves. It has been said, that under the impulse of factious motives he opposed calling out the military, and thereby threw difficulties in the way of the Government at a moment of extreme public danger.[2] It is however to be observed that the speech in which he said "that he would on all occasions oppose such a proposition" was made on the 2nd of June,[3] and it was not till the 4th that the riots assumed those gigantic proportions which made an appeal to the military force absolutely necessary. The 3rd of June was a day of absolute quiet; so was the 5th, when the Privy Council met, and believing the danger to be over, decided to do nothing beyond offer £500 reward for the apprehension of the persons who had destroyed the chapels of the Bavarian and Sardinian Ambassadors.[4] The real lesson which the riots taught was the necessity of reorganizing the police. This was insisted upon with great force by Shelburne in the House of Lords on the 3rd of June. "Let the Administration," he said, "recollect what the Police of France was; let them examine its good, and not be blind to its evil. They would find its construction excellent, its use and direction abominable. Let them embrace the one and shun the other.[5] The Police of France was wise to the last degree in its institution, but being perverted in its use, its very merit became its mischief. Instead ot applying it to the general benefit of the kingdom, the ministers of France had applied it to their own political purposes; they had perverted it into an espionnage, a word, which he thanked God, would not yet admit of an English interpretation. Let the appointment of magis-
- ↑ Dunning, Memoranda on the Riots, June 1780. Lansdowne House MSS.
- ↑ Massey, History of England, ii. 462.
- ↑ Parliamentary History, xxi. 671.
- ↑ Stanhope, vii. 35.
- ↑ Lord Shelburne told Morellet in 1783 that had he remained in office he would have made the establishment of a real Police Force under the control of the Secretary of State one of his principal objects. (Notes of Conversations, Lansdowne House MSS.)
