The masses were better than their leader.

"Whenever the people have a feeling," Burke once said, "they commonly are in the right: they sometimes mistake the physician." Franklin, who was then in London, was of opinion that if George III.

had had a bad character, and John Wilkes a good one, the latter might have turned the former out of the kingdom; for the turbulence that began in street riots, at one time threatened to end in revolt.

The king himself was attacked with savage invective in papers, of which it was said that no one in the previous century would have dared to print any like them until Charles was fast locked up in Carisbrooke Castle.
As is usual when the minds of those in power have been infected with an arbitrary temper, the employment of military force to crush civil disturbances became a familiar and favourite idea.

The military, said Lord Weymouth, in an elaborate letter which he addressed to the Surrey magistrates, can never be employed to a more constitutional purpose than in the support of the authority and dignity of the magistracy.
If the magistrate should be menaced, he is cautioned not to delay a moment in calling for the aid of the military, and making use of them effectually.