England's situation was becoming grave, and she was inwardly and profoundly uneasy concerning it. The government was weak and unequal to the burden of a struggle which became each day more obstinate; formidable petitions, sustained by the most eloquent voices--by Fox as well as by Burke--demanded an economic reform, necessitated by the ever-increasing expenses of the war. Sudden riots excited in the name of the Protestant religion, which was said to be menaced all at once, stained England and Scotland with blood. {296} In the preceding year a law intended to free the Catholics from some legal disabilities was passed in the Houses almost without opposition. That just measure had excited a certain feeling among the masses. Lord George Gordon, a sincere fanatic whose religious passions disturbed his judgment, had headed a network of Protestants which signed petitions against the modifications effected in the penal laws against Catholics. On the 2d of June, 1780, an immense crowd, assembled at St George's Fields for the presentation of the petition, was moved to the most violent outrages against the peers suspected of being favorable to the Papists. Lord Mansfield entered the House of Lords with his coat torn and his wig in disorder; the Bishop of Lincoln with difficulty saved his life. Soon the tumult spread over the entire town: particular houses were attacked and pillaged; the bank was assailed; moral terror reigned throughout all England, menaced from within and from without, trembling at the idea of a French and Spanish invasion, and incessantly agitated by the howls of a furious populace--"No Popery!" It was a sad and ominous spectacle. "Sixty-six allied ships of line plowed the British Channel; fifty thousand men, assembled in Normandy, were preparing to pounce upon the midland counties. A simple American corsair, Paul Jones, was ravaging the Scotch coasts with impunity. The northern powers, united in Russia and Holland, threatened, arms in hand, to sustain the rights of the neutrals disregarded by the English admiralty courts. Ireland was only waiting a signal to rise; religious strife tore England and Scotland. The authority of Lord North's cabinet was shaken in Parliament as well as in the country. Popular passions carried the day in London, and this great city could be seen for nearly eight days given over to the populace, whose excesses nothing but its own weakness and shame was able to oppose." [Footnote 6] [Footnote 6: Cornelis de Witt, History of Washington.] {297}