The next day the Lord Mayor, though labouring under the gout, attended the House. He was escorted by a thin concourse of people, though thousands of hand-bills had been dispersed to invite a mob. He told the House that he had little to say; that he had done his duty according to his oath, and did avow the charge. For himself, this was all he had to say; for the City, he demanded to be heard by counsel. The Charters of the City he desired might be read, which was complied with. After an hour and a half he grew so ill that he asked leave to retire, which was granted, and the matter was adjourned till the following Friday. Dunning moved to grant the City counsel, which Thurlow opposed; but it being observed that the whole affair was adjourned, it was then dropped. Lord North moved to send for the City’s book, that they might expunge the messenger’s recognizance and discharge, which was opposed, but ordered. An incident, more memorable, perhaps, than the business itself, from the secret it brought to light, or rather authenticated, followed next. Charles Fox, with his usual intemperance, moved to examine Alderman Oliver the next day, whom he should consider, he said, in a public light, as an assassin of the constitution. Colonel Barré (for Oliver had retired with the Lord Mayor) said, it became no man to call another assassin, who assassinated that person behind his back. Fox, with the same violence replied, When he was a boy at school, he remembered nothing so well as the clamour against Barré for assassinating Mr. Pitt behind his back.[166] To that attack Barré returned this thundering sentence: “If the gentleman would go _home_, he might learn the name of the person who set me upon that assassination, which I now so much abhor,” and of which Lord Holland[167] had always been suspected, and was now proved to be the instigator. Nor was this the whole that came out; for Barré now told several persons that Lord Chatham had, on their reconciliation, acquainted him, that on the very day of Barré’s second attack on him, Lord Holland had hurried out of the House after him, and had said, he hoped he did not think that he (Lord Holland) had any hand in encouraging the outrage, in which he vowed he was not concerned.