This was the
natural consequence of tilings. John Wilkes having been raised to the
dignity of lord mayor, and having regained his seat in parliament,
although he was still in some degree a thorn in the sides of ministers,
had become more circumspect than heretofore. He no longer harangued
at the public meetings of the populace, and was hence looked upon as a
renegade, and Horne Tooke stepped into his place. The supplanter proved
as bold as the man he had supplanted--stern "patriot" as Wilkes had
been. This was seen in the midst of the agitation into which England was
thrown by the events which had happened in America. At a meeting of the
"Society for Constitutional Information," which had been formed in the
metropolis from the wreck of the "Bill of Rights Club," Tooke moved,
"that a subscription be raised for the relief of the widows, orphans,
and aged parents of their American fellow-subjects, who, preferring
death to slavery, were, for this reason only, murdered by the king's
troops at Lexington and Concord, on the 19th of April, 1775." No mention
was made of the widows and orphans of the British troops, which had been
mown down by the rifles of the Americans from their hiding-places. That
was altogether another question: they might or might not be supported
by government, since it was clearly evident, from Horne Tooke's motion,
that they had no business to obey the orders of their superiors. Horne
Tooke's humane motion as it stood, therefore, was adopted--a vote of
L100 was carried, and ordered to be transmitted to Dr.
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