other means to repress it, the Military could interpose without any formality whatever, not as soldiers, but as citizens. "No matter," said Mansfield, "whether their coats be red or brown, they are employed not to subvert but to preserve the laws and Constitution."[1] This doctrine, though correct, is clearly one which requires very close watching; as Dunning pointed out in some observations which he addressed to Shelburne on the subject.[2]
The immediate effect of the riots was the rejection of Burke's Establishment Bill on the 23rd of June.[3] The King foresaw that he could now with perfect safety dissolve Parliament. The Opposition were dispirited, and to a great degree discredited by the successful calumnies of the Minister's friends, and Burke most injudiciously chose this moment to publish a pamphlet in which he abused the Nonconformists as having been greatly concerned in the recent riots.[4] Rockingham himself was especially despondent; and the fact becoming known, the King in July again opened negotiations with him. His reply showed a practical desertion of everything for which the Opposition had been struggling during the past year. Even the independence of America was abandoned.[5] Nor did he propose to give office to Camden, Shelburne, or Grafton, but only to his immediate friends, to Fox, and, in order to please the King, to North. "His terms," says Waipole, "discovered no general views, aimed at reforming no capital grievances, and still less specified complaints against anybody. They were not more honourable to his party than beneficial to the nation. They were so timid, so insignificant, so unmanly, that they had the appearance of being managed only to facilitate Burke's throwing himself into all the measures of the Court, and did not even preserve the dignity of the man courted to be an apostate. The Court treated the Marquis with the contempt which he had so justly incurred."[6]
