incited him to make. From this time forward, he became a zealous opponent of government, especially as regarded their policy towards America, where discontents against their measures were becoming rife and loud. It was not, however, until the session of 1776 that he stood forth as a public speaker, when he commenced his career by a furious attack on ministers, whom he accused of an infamous attempt to bribe him over to their side by the offer of a sinecure of £1000 a year. Whether this charge was true or false, certain it is that ministers felt the effects of the imputation so severely, reiterated and commented on as it was in the withering eloquence of Fox, Burke, and others, that an attempt was made to induce him to cede his seat in parliament, in favour of the famous Irish orator, Henry Flood, by the offer of the place of vice-admiral of Scotland, then vacant by the resignation of the duke of Queensberry. Notwithstanding that lord George's fortune was then scarcely 700 per annum, he had the fortitude to resist the proffered bait, and seemed determined, like Andrew Marvel, to
prefer dining for three days running on a single joint, rather than sacrifice his independence by the acceptance of court-favour. His lordship, indeed, soon began to estrange himself from both parties in the house, and to assume a position then entirely new in parliamentary tactics, and somewhat parallel to the course chalked out for themselves by a few of our patriots in the house of commons at a recent period. Disclaiming all connexion with either whigs or lories, he avowed himself as being devoted solely to the cause of the people. Continuing to represent the borough of Ludgershall, he persevered in animadverting with great freedom, and often with great wit, on the proceedings on both sides of the house, and became so marked, that it was usual at that time to say, that "there were three parties in parliament the ministry, the opposition, and lord George Gordon."
A bill had been brought into parliament, in the session of 1778, by Sir George Saville, who is described by a writer of the whig party as one of the most upright men which perhaps any age or country ever produced, to relieve the Roman catholic subjects of England from some of the penalties they were subject to, by an act passed in the eleventh and twelfth year of King William III., an act supposed by many to have originated in faction, and which at all events, from many important changes since the time of its enactment, had become unnecessary, and therefore unjust.
On the passing of this bill, which required a test of fidelity from the parties who claimed its protection, many persons of that religion, and of the first families and fortunes in the kingdom, came forward with the most zealous professions of attachment to the government; so that the good effects of the indulgence were immediately felt, and hardly a murmur from any quarter was heard. This act of Sir George Saville did not extend to Scotland; but in the next winter, a proposition was made by several individuals to revise the penal laws in force against the catholics in that kingdom also: at least a report prevailed of such an intention. The people in general, having still a keen recollection of the religious dissensions of the preceding century, were strongly excited by this rumour, and formed numerous associations throughout the country, for the purpose of resisting, by petition, any remission of the catholic penalties. In this movement, they were countenanced generally by the less moderate section of the national clergy, and, perhaps, the public fervour was raised by no circumstance so much as by the indifference with which the majority of that body had treated the subject in the General Assembly of 1778, when the idea of a prospective declaration against the measure, was coldly negatived. The proceedings in Scotland, and some inflammatory pamphlets, published about the same time, gradually awakened the public mind in England, or at least the less informed part
