Lord George, unhappily, could not keep out of trouble, although naturally of mild disposition. He was an excitable, rather weak-minded man, easily carried away by his enthusiasm on particular points. Six years later he espoused, with customary warmth and want of judgment, the case of other prisoners in Newgate, and published a pamphlet purporting to be a petition from them presented to himself, praying him to “interfere and secure their liberties by preventing their being sent to Botany Bay.” Prisoners labouring under severe sentences cried out from their dungeons for redress. “Some were about to suffer execution without righteousness, others to be sent off to a barbarous country.” “The records of justice have been falsified,” the pamphlet went on to say, “and the laws profanely altered by men like ourselves. The bloody laws against us have been enforced, under a normal administration, by mere whitened walls, men who possess only the show of justice, and who condemned us to death contrary to law.” That this silly production should be made the subject of a criminal information for libel, rather justifies the belief that an exaggerated importance was given to Lord George’s vagaries, both by the Government and his own relations and friends. No doubt he was a thorn in the side of his family, but the ministry could well have afforded to treat him and his utterances with contempt. He was, however, indicted at the King’s Bench for publishing the petition, which he had actually himself written, with a view to raise a tumult among the prisoners within Newgate, or cause a disturbance by exciting the compassion of those without. The pamphlet included the law and judges in indiscriminate abuse. “The laws,” said the Attorney-General, “might not be absolutely perfect, but those who condemned them should not reside under their jurisdiction. The criminal law was nowhere attended to with more, or enforced with so much lenity.”[198] Lord George when “wanted” on these charges was not to be found. At first it was thought he had escaped to Holland, but he was at length arrested in Birmingham, dressed in Jewish garb, and wearing a long beard. Some time before this he had espoused Judaism, even submitting, it was alleged, to circumcision, a change of religious belief for which he was excommunicated at Marylebone church. When put upon his trial he conducted his own defence, and made a long and desultory harangue, which included a history of the English criminal law from the days of Athelstan.