[Sidenote: The City's second letter to Lord Bathurst. 17 June, 1780.] This reply being deemed unsatisfactory, the lord mayor wrote a second letter (17 June) pointing out that Lord Amherst's orders to Colonel Twistleton, of the 13th, would, if literally executed, disarm those very persons without whose assistance it would have been impossible for the civic authorities to have executed the Order of Council of the 9th instant. This (he explains) is what was meant in his former letter, when he said that Lord Amherst's letters militated against the orders first received from the Lords of the Council, and the Court of Aldermen now desired him to submit to his lordship's consideration "whether some further explanation might not be necessary to prevent a construction which would leave the civil magistrate without power to act at all, for want of necessary support."[473] [Sidenote: Lord Bathurst's reply, 20 June, 1780.] The lord mayor's letter having been submitted to the Lords of the Council, the President replied, three days later (20 June), that in the opinion of their lordships the matter had been fully explained in his letter of the 15th. With regard, however, to the alleged impracticability of executing the Orders of Council of the 9th instant without the assistance of the inhabitants of the several wards who had armed themselves, the Council was of opinion that in times of danger "a reasonable number of inhabitants, armed according to the nature and circumstances of the case, may attend the peace-officers, as assistants to them, for the preservation of the public peace, until the danger be over." He concluded by reminding the aldermen that the privilege enjoyed by subjects of carrying arms under the Bill of Rights (to which they had referred in the mayor's last letter) did not extend to mustering and arraying armed bodies without the king's permission.[474] The next day (21 June) the Duke of Richmond moved in the Lords that the adjutant-general's orders contravened the Bill of Rights, but the motion was negatived without a division.[475] [Sidenote: Another letter to Lord Bathurst, 24 June, 1780.]