"The lava flow of violence ran through the political landscape, sometimes underground, sometimes on the surface. Unpopular politicians were often ragged, peers' carriages pelted and rocked, and their windows smashed, as they left Westminster... Minorities were tempting targets. Methodists were treated as cockshies (John Wesley saw it as a mark of Divine favour that no brick hit him personally), as were homosexuals, witches, bawds and Frenchmen. The Act of 1753 legalizing the naturalization of Jews brought baying anti-Semitic mobs on to the streets: it was immediately repealed. Irish-baiting and Scots-baiting were national sports. Fear of popery sparked the Gordon Riots in London in 1780, though targets broadened to include the rich, Lord Mansfield, breweries and Newgate goal."