CHAPTER VII.
Walpole determines to resume his Memoirs.—General Election.—Audacity of Wilkes.—He contests the City of London and the County of Middlesex.—Riots during his Election.—His Triumph.—He surrenders to the King’s Bench.—The Elections.—Plan for the Expulsion of Wilkes.—Meeting of Parliament.—Riot before the King’s Bench.—Debate on Wilkes in the Commons.—French Designs on Corsica.—Riot among the Coalheavers.—Heroism of a Sailor.—Renewal of Wilkes’s Outlawry.—His Condemnation for the North Briton and the Essay on Woman.—Riots at Boston.
1768.
As I had rather disparage these Memoirs than disappoint the reader by promising him more satisfaction than he will find, let me remind him that I had now quitted my seat in Parliament; and consequently, what traces of debates shall appear hereafter must be mutilated and imperfect, as being received by hearsay from others, or taken from notes communicated to me. As I had detached myself, too, from all parties, I was in the secrets of none: and though I had curiosity enough to fathom some, opportunities of learning others, and made observations on what was passing, in which I was assisted by the clue of what I had formerly known; yet it will doubtless be perceived that my information was often incomplete, and that the mysterious springs of several events never came to my knowledge. In those situations I shall be far from decisive: yet that very ignorance may guide future historians to the search after authentic papers; and my doubts may lead to some certainty. It may yet be asked why I choose, under these impediments, to continue my narrative, while I allow that it must fall short of the preceding parts? The honestest answer is the best: it amuses me. I like to give my opinion on what I have seen: I wish to warn posterity (however vain such zeal) against the folly and corruption and profligacy of the times I have lived in; and I think that, with all its defects, the story I shall tell will be more complete than if I had stopped at the end of the foregoing Parliament, which was no era of anything but of my own dereliction of politics; and not having been the hero of my own tale, I am desirous at least of bringing it down to the termination of the political life of some of the principal actors in the foregoing pages. I propose to carry the work down to the pacification with Spain in 1771, when not only all our foreign quarrels were terminated, but when the Court had surmounted every domestic difficulty, had pacified the Colonies and Ireland; and by the aid of fortune and by the folly of opposition, had little to disturb them but their own indiscretion, and the restless, though timid desires of ascertaining and extending a prerogative which the King enjoyed effectually by less obnoxious, though less dangerous, means than force. Whether I shall live to complete this plan, or whether, if I do, I shall not again be tempted to prosecute it farther, I am equally ignorant. The reader, that is amused, may perhaps be glad if I proceed. If I am tedious, the most delicate of my readers will always have that facile remedy in his power, of ceasing to read me the moment he is tired. To such, therefore, I make no apology. To please the other sort, if I can—at least, to employ some vacant hours, I continue my journal.
The Parliament having been dissolved on the 11th of March, 1768, and the writs issued for the general election of another, the memorable John Wilkes, who had resided for some time at Paris, and had fallen almost into oblivion, came suddenly over, and declared himself a candidate to represent the City of London. His first step, indeed, was to write a submissive letter to the King, imploring pardon; but his Majesty refusing to read the letter,[87] Wilkes, bold from his desperate situation, and fond of extraordinary daring, opened his new campaign by this attack on the metropolis itself, though an outlaw, and subject to be sent to prison on his former sentence. Men wondered at the inactivity of a Government that had by no means shown itself indifferent to the persecution of so audacious a criminal, and expected every day to hear he was taken up. But whether the Court looked with contempt on a measure that promised so little success, or whether, which I believe was their true motive, they feared that new severity would enhance the merits of the martyr in the eyes of the people, neither the Government nor the courts of law interposed to check his career. Alderman Sir William Baker was the only citizen of note and fortune that countenanced his pretensions; yet Wilkes persisted, appeared openly on the hustings, and contested a seat with the most popular of the City’s magistrates. The lower people[88] embraced his cause with ardour; and he soon appeared to have so many partizans, that his fortune became combined with that national frenzy, stock-jobbing. Bets on his success were turned into stock; and in the phrase of the times, he was done, like other wagers on the funds. The credit of the candidate Alderman was, however, too firmly established to be shaken so suddenly. Wilkes was every day the lowest on the poll, and the very first evening as he left the court, he was arrested for debt—probably by the underhand direction of the Ministry; but his attorney answered for his appearance; and preferring to be a prisoner to the Government, as more likely to create pity, than to lie in prison for debt, Wilkes acquainted the Solicitor of the Treasury, that he intended to surrender himself to his outlawry. He returned each day to the hustings, but lost his election; Harley, the Lord Mayor, Sir Robert Ladbrooke,[89] Beckford, and Trecothick,[90] being elected; the last, a West-India merchant, who, at the time of the Stamp Act, had signalized himself by procuring petitions against it from Bristol, Liverpool, and other commercial towns. Sir Richard Glynn,[91] Paterson, the unpopular creature of Lord Holland, and Wilkes, being thrown out. During the struggle, Beckford and Trecothick behaved towards Wilkes with much civility; the Lord Mayor with sullen coldness, and occasionally with spirited resistance.
Far from dismayed, Wilkes, like an able general, rallied his forces, and declared himself a candidate for the county of Middlesex—nay, threatened to stand for Surrey, too, in opposition to George Onslow,[92] one of his deserting friends; yet hitherto he had no eminent patronage. Lord Temple, linked with Grenville, abandoned him. Humphrey Cotes,[93] an old ally, but who in his absence, it was said, had cheated him of some money, made amends by warm activity; and the Duke of Portland, incensed by his late affair with Sir James Lowther, on Wilkes’s pretensions to Middlesex, espoused his cause. Lord Mansfield, equally revengeful, timorous, and subtle, pretended that it was the office of the Chancellor to bring this outlaw to justice; but the Chancellor and the Duke of Grafton did not care to increase their unpopularity by adding persecution to the complaints Wilkes had already made of their giving him up. Still less was Lord Camden solicitous to save Lord Mansfield from danger and odium. The Chancellor went to Bath, and the Duke to Newmarket.
On the 28th of March the election began at Brentford; and while the irresolution of the Court and the carelessness of the Prime Minister, Grafton, caused a neglect of all precautions, the zeal of the populace had heated itself to a pitch of fury. They possessed themselves of all the turnpikes and avenues leading to the place of election by break of day, and would suffer no man to pass who bore not in his hat a blue cockade inscribed with the name of Wilkes and Number 45,[94] or written on paper. The other candidates were, Sir William Beauchamp Proctor[95] and Mr. Cooke, the former members. Cooke was confined with the gout: a relation who appeared for him was roughly handled at Hyde Park Corner, and Sir William’s carriage was demolished. At Brentford the mob was more peaceable, but had poured in in such numbers, that on the first day’s poll the votes for Wilkes were 1200, for Proctor, 700, for Cooke, 500. At night the people grew outrageous; though when Wilkes first arrived in town, I had seen him pass before my windows in a hackney chair, attended but by a dozen children and women; now all Westminster was in a riot. It was not safe to pass through Piccadilly; and every family was forced to put out lights: the windows of every unilluminated house were demolished. The coach-glasses of such as did not huzza for Wilkes and liberty were broken, and many chariots and coaches were spoiled by the mob scratching them with the favourite 45. Lord Weymouth, Secretary of State, sent orders to Justice Fielding to have constables kept in readiness. He begged his Lordship not to tell it, but there was not a constable in London—all had been sent for to Brentford. On this the guards were drawn out. Lord Bute’s house was attacked, but the mob could not force an entrance, nor at Lord Egmont’s in Pall Mall. The Duke of Northumberland the mob obliged to appear and to give them liquor, and to drink with them to Wilkes’s success. Some ladies of rank were taken out of their chairs, and ordered to join the popular cry; and to Lady Holderness they cried, No King! No regal Government! In the City they attacked the mansion-house and broke the windows. The Lord Mayor, a zealous anti-Wilkite, sent for the trained-bands, but they were not sufficient to disperse the tumult. Six thousand weavers had risen in behalf of Wilkes, and were the principal actors. Some of the regimental drummers beat their drums for Wilkes, who finding his election secure, dismissed the weavers, and by the next morning all was quiet, but the poll was at an end. Wilkes was too triumphant to be resisted; and, master to act as he pleased, he threw his supernumerary votes into Cooke, who was elected with him.
The second night was less tumultuous; but the Scots, sullenly persisting in not celebrating their enemy’s triumph by illuminations, had their windows broken. The Dowager Duchess of Hamilton,[96] one of the beautiful Gunnings, though born in Ireland, had contracted such hatred to Wilkes from her two Scotch marriages, that though with child, and though her husband, Lord Lorn, was in Scotland, and all her young children by both matches were in the house with her, she resolutely forbade her house to be lighted up. The mob assaulted it, broke down the outward gates with iron crows, tore up the pavement of the street, and battered the doors and shutters for three hours, but could not surmount her courage. The Count de Seilern, the Austrian Ambassador, the most stately and ceremonious of men, they took out of his coach, and chalked 45 on the sole of his shoe. He complained in form of the insult: it was as difficult for the Ministers to help laughing as to give him redress.
Elate with success, the triumphant tribune assumed a tone that heaped new mortification on the Court. In his printed thanks to his constituents he besought them to give him their instructions from time to time, promising that he would always defend their civil and religious rights. Hearing that the Privy Council intended to issue a proclamation against riots, the new defender of the faith instructed his committee or privy council to preserve the peace, and ordered them, as they returned in procession from Brentford, not to pass by St. James’s Palace, that no insult or indecency might be offered to the King. He vaunted that his Committee had patroled the streets of the capital on the night of the 30th and had kept all quiet.
The Court received another defeat of less consequence. They had set up Jenkinson, one of the favourite cabal, for Oxford, where he had been bred, but he lost the election by a considerable majority, though the favours of the Crown were now showered on that University.[97]
The Methodists endeavoured to draw notice to themselves, but were disappointed. Lord Baltimore was prosecuted for a rape on a loose girl, who had staid in his house for some days under many opportunities of escaping, but was acquitted on his trial, notwithstanding the hypocrites had much incensed the populace against him.[98] Six young methodists were expelled from Oxford, but their party could raise no clamour on this supposed persecution. Whitfield, their archpriest, attending one Gibson, who was hanged for forgery, to the gallows, and preaching his funeral sermon, assured the audience that he was gone to heaven; and that a fellow executed at the same time was probably in the same paradise, having had the happiness of touching Gibson’s garment. But these impieties and martyrdoms were drowned in the lustre of St. Wilkes’s glory, and for once the barefaced libertine carried away the vulgar from the holy knaves.
It is true that half the success of Wilkes was owing to the supineness of the Ministers. Lord Chatham would take no part in business. The Duke of Grafton neglected everything, and whenever pressed to be active, threatened to resign. The Chancellor, placed between two such untractable friends, with whom he was equally discontent, avoided dipping himself farther. Conway, no longer in the Duke’s confidence, and who was more hurt at neglect than pleased with power, stood in the same predicament. Lord Gower thought of nothing but ingratiating himself at St. James’s, and though what little business was done, Lord Weymouth executed, it required all Wood’s violence and animosity to Wilkes to spur him up to any activity. Wood indeed said that if the King should pardon Wilkes, Lord Weymouth would not sign the pardon. The Scots complained grievously of this want of spirit; and the Lord Mayor consulting the Chancellor on what he should do if Wilkes should stand for the City, and being answered that he must consult the Recorder, Harley sharply replied, “I consulted your Lordship as a minister; I do not want to be told my duty.” Some of the sheriff’s officers, too, not having dared to apprehend Wilkes, though a capias had been issued for that purpose, the Lord Mayor insisted on their being turned out of their places.
Previous to his surrender Wilkes went to Bath, but met with neither honours nor notice. A subscription had been opened for him, and went on but heavily. His enemies served him better. Lord Mansfield tried every subterfuge of the law, not so much to crush Wilkes as to shift the odium of the prosecution on any other shoulders; and as the law is never defective in furnishing expedients to meanness and chicanery, and as the lowest quibbles appeared like armour to the eyes of Lord Mansfield’s cowardice, it is scarce credible what stores of rusty nonsense were brought forth on this occasion, to the equal disgrace of the Chief Justice and the practice.
On the 20th, Wilkes, according to his promise, appeared to his outlawry in the King’s Bench. He did not avow himself for author of the North Briton, though he owned he had written the forty-fifth number, and approved every word of it. When he recollected the “Essay on Woman” he confessed he blushed; yet pleaded that it would not have been published unless stolen from him. He complained of the usage he had received, and of the alteration of the record. Lord Mansfield palliated the latter charge; and then pronounced that Wilkes was not before the court, as nobody had taken out the writ capias ablegatum, which he affirmed the Attorney-General ought to have done. This implied that an outlaw could not surrender himself voluntarily, though he might get anybody to take out that writ. The judges, Yates and Willes, agreed to this jargon, having been induced by Mansfield to cast the blame on the Attorney.[99] On this curious reasoning was Wilkes dismissed. His speech had been received with little applause, and he retired without riot. He had, indeed, advertised a request to the people to make no disturbance; yet the Government had been so much alarmed that a field-day had been appointed in the Park, that troops might be at hand to quell any tumult.
It appeared from this mock scene that an outlawry cannot be set aside but by a process to show there is a flaw in it. Accordingly the profession who love to accumulate absurdities[100] rather than to correct a ridiculous maxim, always take care to prepare a flaw in an outlawry. Wilkes had demanded from the Attorney-General a writ of error, and he had promised it, but was dissuaded on the 19th by the Master of the Rolls, and on the 20th the Attorney came into court without it. He would have taken it out then, but by some other rule it was then too late, or Wilkes should have surrendered to the sheriff. It was on these informalities that Lord Mansfield had argued that Wilkes was not before the court, for, being an outlaw, the law knew no such person; yet this nonentity his Lordship had suffered to revile him to his face on the seat of magistracy.
In the mean time the Parliament was chosen to the content of the Court, though by the inactivity of the Duke of Grafton, and the unpopularity of their chief friends, the majority was not greater than in the last assembly. Sir James Lowther, the Favourite’s son-in-law, was beaten at Carlisle and in the counties of Westmoreland and Cumberland, though he was returned (I think) for the latter against a majority of thirty-four. The Duke of Portland ravished those provinces from him in which he had been paramount, at the expense of forty thousand pounds and to the great damage of his fortune; nor were Sir James’s disbursements less considerable, to which the odious act of ravishing the Duke’s estate from him for an election purpose added signal disrepute. The county of York thanked Sir George Saville for having introduced the bill against nullum tempus, and the Duke of Portland published his case. It displayed the partial and unhandsome conduct of the Treasury, though the Duke could not prove that the lands wrenched from him had not been encroachments of his family. Lord Spencer had not been less profuse in a contest for the town of Nottingham.[101] The immense wealth that had flowed into the country from the war and the East Indies, bore down all barriers of economy, and introduced a luxury of expense unknown to empires of vaster extent. At the same time the incapacity of the Court, which had first provoked the nation by arbitrary attempts, had now sunk the government to a state of contempt; and Wilkes’s triumph having manifested the pusillanimity and want of vigour both in Ministers and magistrates, almost every class of the lower orders thought it a moment for setting up new pretensions in defiance of authority.
At Peterborough the mob rose and demolished Mr. Sutton’s new hospital for inoculation. The coalheavers committed great violences on the river and in Wapping; and by the meeting of Parliament the metropolis was a theatre of tumults and anarchy:—but of these presently. Nor was the press idle; satires swarmed against the Court, and the authoress of all those calamities was the object at which the most envenomed arrows were shot. In a frontispiece to a number of Almon’s Political Register she and Lord Bute were represented in her bedchamber; and lest the personages should be dubious, the royal arms in a widow’s lozenge were pictured over the bed.
On the 27th, Wilkes was carried by a capias to the King’s Bench. Great bail was offered by Humphrey Cotes, but rejected by the court; and the prisoner was committed to the King’s Bench. When he left the court, the people stopped his coach on Westminster Bridge, took off the horses, and drew him themselves to a tavern in Cornhill, dismissing the tipstaves that guarded him, and insisting that he should not go to prison. He persuaded the mob, however, to disperse, and, slipping out by a back door, went immediately and surrendered himself at the King’s Bench Prison.
The Cabinet-Council, in the mean time, were strangely irresolute and uncertain how to act.[102] The King, the Princess, and the Scots, could not bear the idea of Wilkes’s triumph, nor would hear of his being suffered to enjoy a seat in Parliament.[103] The Chancellor was all moderation; Conway, as usual, fluctuated between both opinions. The Lords Gower and Weymouth were for extremities. Yet the total inaction of Lord Chatham, and the sullen negligence of Grafton encouraging no violence, it was determined not to expel Wilkes in the very short session that was soon to meet to give substance to the Parliament, since, no proclamation having been issued to summon this meeting for business, it might be thought too precipitate rigour. The Ministers, it was decided, should only lay in their claim against his admission, unless the House should be much fuller than was expected in so late and short a session, and the voice of the meeting should be loud for expulsion. The measure was neither equitable nor politic, and betrayed a want of firmness. It would give time, if the flame of faction should spread, for counties and boroughs to instruct their members to oppose expulsion, and presented an opportunity to France of blowing up the embers. Great numbers of French had resorted hither at that time and to Ireland; and though the carelessness of the Ministers was so great as to neglect scrutinizing into it, there were grounds for suspecting that Wilkes was privately encouraged by the Court of France.[104] The Comte du Châtelet, their new Ambassador, had certainly had communication with him at Paris, though Châtelet strenuously denied it; and several Frenchmen of quality had sat with Wilkes on the hustings during the election for London, and were protected by him there and at Brentford; though without such protection, a Frenchman at an election would at any time have a risk of being ill-treated by the mob. They visited him in prison; and one of their agents, to my own knowledge, had intimate connection with him. This was one Kendal, an Irishman, who, though of distinguished service in his profession—the army,—had skulked here obscurely for a year, and when he did appear the second winter at M. du Châtelet’s, it was rarely but at very private hours. He had passed himself for a Frenchman that could speak no English, yet having accidentally and unawares discovered his knowledge of our tongue, he afterwards conversed in it fluently. It happened that going one evening to M. du Châtelet’s, I found them perusing an English book. I looked over Kendal’s shoulder, and saw the name of John Wilkes written in the particular character of his own hand, which was something womanish. Kendal hurried the book into his pocket with some confusion—yet I had time to observe the title. It was “Sir James Porter’s Letters on the Turks,”—a work published after the sale of Wilkes’s library, and consequently showed it was borrowed from himself. Though wishing well to Wilkes’s cause against prerogative, I should blush to myself if I concealed the ill I thought of the man. This story has led me from my argument; I meant to add that to allow Wilkes to retain his seat for six months, and deprive him of it afterwards, was heaping injustice upon oppression.
His outlawry was argued in the mean time at the King’s Bench by Serjeant Glynn, as erroneous, and maintained by Thurloe. Lord Mansfield said the court was to take time to consider the respective arguments (though it was known that a flaw was purposely inserted), and put off the decision to the next term—a delay which detained Wilkes in prison and prevented his taking his seat in Parliament. His appearance there was dreaded by the Administration, especially as it was whispered that he intended to move for an augmentation of the pay of the army, on pretence of the dearness of provisions. Could he shake the loyalty of the guards the Government would have had little to trust to—so great was its weakness and unpopularity. Nor did the Ministers depend on being able to carry his expulsion. Beckford from factious views, Hussey from integrity, and Lord Granby from candour, declared against so rigorous a measure. Nor were all men satisfied of the propriety of the time, many doubts having arisen whether the Parliament could transact business, as such intention had not been mentioned in the proclamation,—an informality soon passed over, it being necessary to renew the Militia and Corn Bills, which had been granted only to the end of the next session. In truth, some exertion—at least, some appearance of authority—was become of absolute necessity, the mutinous spirit of the people and the contempt in which the Government was held, carrying various classes of men into most dangerous excesses. The town of Boston, in America, had invited the other colonies to unite against taxation. The Irish were as warm against receiving an augmentation of troops; and the Irish country gentlemen, though apprehending for their property from the designs of France, did not dare to declare for a larger army, as the new octennial election was approaching.
But it was in the metropolis itself that the flame of riot burst out with most violence. Before the King’s Bench prison, where lay the people’s idol, were constant tumults. The sailors aboard the merchantmen in the river mutinied for increase of wages, rose to the number of four thousand men, and stopped all outward-bound ships from sailing. The watermen on the Thames, and even the journeymen hatters set up equal pretensions, thinking the season favourable to their demands, and excited by the reigning scarcity and by the agents of Wilkes. Harley, the Lord Mayor, alone behaved with spirit, and seized some of the rioters, and bade the rest draw up a petition to Parliament, if they wanted, or had pretensions to redress.
During this ferment the new Parliament met on May the 10th, and was opened by commission, the King making no speech, as the session was to be so short. A great mob assembled round the Houses clamouring for Wilkes and liberty. Lord Hillsborough complained of this to the Lords, and the Chancellor moved that the constables should be ordered to disperse the people. Lord Sandwich proposed to send and inquire if the riot had ceased. The Duke of Richmond laughed at their fears and said it was nothing. The Duke of Grafton asked with much warmth if it was nothing when the mob joined the name of Wilkes, who had been committed to prison on the addresses of both Houses, with the sacred sound of liberty?—but Grafton’s warmth was burning stubble, that easily blazed and was easily extinguished. The House of Commons elected Sir John Cust, their former speaker.
A worse tumult happened the same day at the King’s Bench prison, whence the mob attempted to deliver Wilkes, and carry him to the House of Commons. The riot act being read and the guards sent for, a skirmish ensued, and one Allen, a young man of fair character, who, some said, had been merely a spectator, was pursued and murdered inhumanly by a Scotch soldier as he fled. The tumult was quashed, but Allen’s death only served to exasperate the people. His dead body was borne about the streets with signal lamentation, and interred with parade. Handbills had been previously dispersed among the soldiers, entreating them not to fire on their countrymen, but the third regiment of guards being employed, who were all Scots, the soldiers had carried the handbills to their officers, nor had been seduced by Wilkes’s promise of obtaining for them increase of pay. The circumstance of Scots being employed in this massacre, as it was denominated, greatly increased the discontents; and the officious folly of Lord Barrington, who wrote a letter as Secretary at War, to thank the regiment for their behaviour as if they had gained a victory, shocked even those who were not factious.[105] Gillam, the Justice of Peace who had ordered the soldiers to fire, was tried for murder and acquitted. Whitfield, who had a mind to be tampering in these commotions, prayed for Wilkes before his sermon. Another mob burned a new invented sawing-mill belonging to one Dingley.
On the 11th a vast body of sailors attended the Houses,[106] but in a modest manner, and desiring only to have their grievances considered, with promise of acquiescing to the determination of Parliament. They declared their attachment to the King, and meeting Wilkes’s mob attacked and dispersed it. Yet notwithstanding this respectful behaviour, the Privy Council, weighing the damage occasioned to the merchants, issued out a proclamation against the sailors. The same day an account came that the proposed augmentation of the army in Ireland had been rejected by that Parliament.
On the 12th the Earl of Suffolk moved the Lords to address the King to confer some mark of distinction on the Lord Mayor Harley for his activity and spirit. The Duke of Grafton said his Majesty intended it, and was considering what honour to bestow on him. As Lord Suffolk was attached to Grenville, his motion marked that Grenville’s high spirit could not digest the pusillanimity of Government, though no longer Minister himself, and that he was glad to point out that pusillanimity.
At night a great meeting was held at Lord North’s on the subject of Wilkes, but determined nothing. Lord Barrington, Lord Clare, and Sir Gilbert Elliot were for expelling him; Conway, unwilling to contradict his former behaviour, was for staying till the next winter.[107] Lord Granby was firm against expulsion. To his natural lenity had been added the address of Calcraft, who having been treated with haughtiness and contempt by the Duke of Grafton on a late election, had seduced Granby from his attachment to the Court with art worthy of his master, Lord Holland. Lord Granby was in his power by the money Calcraft had lent him; and none of the enemies the Duke of Grafton raised every day, proved a sharper thorn than Calcraft. Nor was Conway himself, though less irascible, much less offended with the Duke. From having been his intimate friend and associate in administration, Grafton had coarsely shuffled him out of the Secretary’s office to make room for Lord Weymouth; and now, on the opening of the Parliament, had deputed Lord North, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to read the King’s speech to the members at the Cockpit, without a word of apology to Conway, who had officiated the last time; nor could his loss of place excuse such coldness in a friend.
On the 13th died the Princess Louisa, the youngest of the King’s sisters, except the Queen of Denmark. She had long languished under the family complaint, and seemed to be but a child of twelve years old. This was the third of her children the Princess of Wales lost in two years.
The same motion that had been made to the Lords in favour of Mr. Harley, was carried unanimously in the Commons. Grenville painted the supineness of the Ministers in strong colours.[108] Wood defended them with heat and sharpness. Burke and Lord John Cavendish proposed a longer session, and dropped reflections on dissolution of connections, which Conway took up as levelled at him. Not a word was said on Wilkes. The Chancellor and Lord Shelburne, the former from opposition to the Bedfords, the latter from enmity both to them and Grafton, declared earnestly against the expulsion: yet the Rockingham party did not discover that the Chancellor was hostile to the Bedfords, nor would have joined him if they had, so inveterate were they both to him and Lord Chatham; nor did they find out that Conway was out of humour, for they found out nothing. Harley was soon afterwards made a privy councillor, and had a lucrative contract.[109]
The riots continuing, and the journeymen tailors taking advantage of them and of the mourning for Princess Louisa, rose in a great body, and went to petition Parliament for increase of wages, but were prevailed on by Justice Fielding to behave with decency. Lord Barrington on this occasion moved to enable the King to embody the militia on emergencies—the first experiment for enlarging the power of the Crown with that accession of strength. But Sir George Saville, and even Lord Strange and other courtiers, opposed the motion so ardently, that it was dropped; though Grenville, on the other hand, declared for the proposition.[110] The sailors were appeased by the merchants agreeing to enlarge their pay.
The new Parliament produced many new speakers, of whom the most eminent was Dunning, the Solicitor-General, but whose fame did not rise then in proportion to the celebrity he had attained at the bar. The others, of far less note, were, Mr. Cornwall, a sensible lawyer,[111] Mr. Phipps, son of Lord Mulgrave, a young man whose application forced him at last into notice, and who, though a seaman, was so addicted to the study of the law, that he got the appellation of the Marine Lawyer;[112] a young Mr. Cavendish,[113] hot-headed and odd; a Colonel Lutterel,[114] more absurd and impudent; and James Townshend and Sawbridge, who will be often mentioned, though not for their eloquence. Lutterel had a personal enmity to Wilkes, and had declared that he would force the House into some resolution on Wilkes’s case. Accordingly, he moved that the proper officer should acquaint the House why Wilkes had not been taken into custody sooner. Lord North said the motion was so absurdly worded, that he could not think himself pointed at; but he alleged that everything had been left to due course of law. This was confirmed by the Attorney-General; and young Mr. Lyttelton, only son of Lord Lyttelton, urging with decency that the time was not proper while the case was depending in the courts below, the previous question was put and carried; yet not a word was uttered in Wilkes’s favour. Mr. Lyttelton, who soon after lost his seat, his election being contested, had parts and knowledge, and conciliated much favour by that first essay; but his character was uncommonly odious and profligate, and his life a grievous course of mortification to his father. More will be said of him hereafter.
So spiritless an Administration, whose measures were not planned, but started indigested out of the daily occurrences, was not likely to give serious attention to remote situations. They endeavoured to doze over all thoughts of the Continent; and yet the enterprising activity of the Duc de Choiseul now and then interrupted their slumbers, though it could not dispel them entirely. Stung with our victories in the last war, and aware of our supineness, that ambitious man was meditating new wars, impatient to indemnify his master for some of their losses by new usurpations. The poor Corsicans were the first victims of his politics. He had for some months been preparing a mighty invasion of their island. Sixteen battalions were destined to the conquest, which was sheltered under a pretended purchase from the Genoese. De Sorbe, their agent at Paris, and born there while his father exercised the same function, had suggested the idea. Pride, impotence, and revenge had operated to induce the Genoese to sell their title to a more formidable usurper,—the liberty of others appearing a marketable commodity to a republic composed only of nobles, who are ever ready to be subordinate tyrants. The object was too considerable to be indifferent to us: Corsica, in the hands of France, might essentially affect our Mediterranean trade during a war. To suffer the conquest were a disgrace, and would imply timidity. Generosity towards a free nation, who had struggled so long and successfully for their liberty, and had sought our protection, the poor Corsicans could not venture to expect. One of the few acts of Lord Bute’s monarchic[115] and dastardly Administration had been to forbid our sending succours to the Corsican rebels, as he called them—a sentence that betrayed his heart, not his sense. What right had the little republic of Genoa to tyrannise over the freemen of Corsica? Genoa had acted throughout the late war with as much partiality to France[116] as she dared, and was rewarded by our proscribing her enemies. On the other hand, our interference now might light up another war; and though the finances of France were in at least as bad a situation as our own, we could ill have supported the burthen, and were in too distracted a situation at home to make war advisable. The Council assembled on the point. Parliament might blame them for taking a part, or for taking none—the latter half of the dilemma suited their natures best, and no resolution was then taken. Yet procrastination produced no repose; alarms thickened from every quarter: the mutinous spirit of the people broke out, whether the occasion was political or private. A butcher, murdered in a brothel at Dublin, had raised such a flame, that forty houses were pulled down by the mob, and several persons killed.
At such a crisis the Ministers would not venture dismissing the Parliament to a distant period, but on the 20th of May adjourned it only for a fortnight, intending, by short prorogations, to keep it in readiness to meet.[117]
Of all the tumults, the fiercest and most memorable was the following. A dispute having arisen between the coalworkers and the coalheavers, the latter of whom were chiefly Irish—nay, some of them Whiteboys, an Act of Parliament had passed the last year, subjecting the coalheavers to the jurisdiction of the alderman of the ward; an office had been erected, and one Green, who kept an alehouse, had been constituted their agent. Houston, a man who wanted to supplant Green, had incensed the coalheavers against him, and they threatened his destruction. Apprised of their design, he every night removed his wife and children out of his house. One evening he received notice that the coalheavers were coming to attack him. He had nobody with him but a maid-servant and a sailor, who by accident was drinking in the house. Green asked the sailor if he would assist him? “Yes,” answered the generous tar, “I will defend any man in distress.” At eight the rioters appeared, and fired on the house, lodging in one room above two hundred bullets; and when their ammunition was spent, they bought pewter pots, cut them to pieces, and fired them as ball. At length with an axe they broke out the bottom of the door; but that breach the sailor defended singly; while Green and his maid kept up a constant fire, and killed eighteen of the besiegers. Their powder and ball being at last wasted, Green said he must make his escape: “for you,” said he to the friendly sailor, “they will not hurt you.” Green, retiring from the back room of his house, got into a carpenter’s yard, and was concealed in a sawpit, over which the mob passed in their pursuit of him, being told he was gone forwards. I should scarce have ventured this narrative, had not all the circumstances been proved in a court of justice. Yet how many reflections must the whole story create in minds not conversant in a vast capital—free, ungoverned, unpoliced, and indifferent to everything but its pleasures and factions! Who will believe that such a scene of outrage could happen in the residence of Government?—that the siege lasted nine hours, and that no Guards were sent to the relief of the besieged till five in the morning? Who will believe that while such anarchy reigned at one end of the Metropolis, it made so little impression at the Court end that it was scarce mentioned? Though in London myself, all I heard was, that a man had been attacked in his house, and had killed three of the rioters. Nor were the circumstances attended to, till the trial of Green for murder, of which he was honourably acquitted, divulged his, his maid’s, and the sailor’s heroism. Yet did not the fury of the colliers cease, though seven of them were taken and executed. Green was forced to conceal himself from their rage; but his sister, giving a supper to her friends for joy of her brother’s safety, her house was attacked by those assassins, their faces covered with black crape, who tore her into the street, and murdered her. Yet, perhaps, of all the circumstances of this tragedy, not one was so singular, from the display of so great a mind, as the indifference of the sailor, who never owned himself, never claimed honour or recompense for his generous gallantry. As brave as the Codes of fabulous Rome, his virtue was satisfied with defending a man oppressed; and he knew not that an Alexander deserved less fame than he, who seemed not to think that he deserved any.
The Bedford faction, who had got almost entire possession of the Duke of Grafton, began to perceive how little security there was in that tenure. They found that every disgust inspired him with thoughts of resigning. They saw the immediate necessity of strengthening themselves lest some sudden caprice should hurry him to resign, and leave them weak at Court, or exposed to the dislike of the next Minister, whoever it should be. Rigby in particular had not attained the paymastership which Grafton had engaged to him on the first opportunity, and was sure of being the first victim if Grenville, whom he had sacrificed, should return to power. With as little decency as he had abandoned him, Rigby now made secret offers to Grenville to support him, if the Duke of Grafton should quit—but they were rejected, both from the haughtiness of Grenville’s nature, and by the positive injunction of Lord Temple, who sent Calcraft to Lord Hertford with an account of that transaction; adding, that his Lordship had sworn to his brother, that should he ever join the Bedfords, he (Lord Temple) would persecute him to the last hour of his life. This Lord Hertford was desired to communicate to the King, with offers from Lord Temple to serve his Majesty whenever he should be wanted. This mine failing, Rigby pushed the Lords Gower and Weymouth to unite with him in insisting with the Duke of Grafton on the removal of Lord Shelburne, who, they said, betrayed them, and opposed all their measures in Council. The accusation did not want truth; nor was its purport unwelcome either to the Duke or to the King. The former hated him for enjoying Lord Chatham’s favour; and the King had not forgotten the tricks that Shelburne had played Lord Bute. To make the proposal still palatable, the Cabal offered to his Majesty the choice of the Duke of Northumberland or Lord Egmont, his own creatures, of Lord Holderness, anybody’s creature, or of Lord Sandwich, their own friend, to replace Lord Shelburne. Willing as he was to give up the last, the King had adopted a rule of turning no single man, both from pusillanimity, and from never being sorry to embarrass Ministers, whom he had not taken from inclination. Thus was Shelburne saved for some months longer. In his chief point Rigby had very soon better success.
On the 2nd of June the Parliament met, and was again adjourned for three weeks. On the 8th Wilkes’s outlawry was debated in the King’s Bench. The Judges of that Court had agreed with their chief, Lord Mansfield, to reverse it; yet the latter now maintained it in a fine oration, but in the conclusion pronounced it void from a flaw; which, he said, had not been noticed by the prisoner’s counsel. This curious error was, that the proceedings were stated at the County-court for the County of Middlesex; when lo! the form ought to have been at the County-court of Middlesex, for the County of Middlesex—a form of words, said that oracle of law, absolutely necessary. It was said that Serjeant Glynn, Wilkes’s counsel, had made the same notable discovery two months before in his pleading; and thus the Chief Justice had not even the honour of the chicanery he boasted. It was still more ridiculously, and with as little truth, that he vapoured on his own firmness. He knew, he said, in what danger he held his life, but he was past sixty, and valued not the remnant of being. He would act boldly; fiat justitia, et ruat cœlum—prodigious danger when he was doing what was an act of popularity, and which probably he would not have done but from timidity![118] The reversion of the outlawry having an appearance of being favourable to the prisoner, the mob huzzaed, though he was remanded to prison till he should receive sentence.
In the meantime a new calamity befel the Court. Cooke, the other member for Middlesex, died, and Serjeant Glynn, as the champion of Wilkes, was set up by the popular party for Middlesex. Cooke was Joint-Paymaster with the younger Thomas Townshend, a friend of the Duke of Grafton, who, to gratify Rigby with the whole employment, offered to make Townshend one of the Vice-Treasurers of Ireland. Townshend refused it with warmth, saying, he would not be turned backwards and forwards every six months; and resigning, joined the Opposition.[119] On the 10th, Rigby kissed the King’s hand as Paymaster. He was succeeded as Vice-Treasurer of Ireland by Lord Clare. Lord Hillsborough returned to the Board of Trade, with the superintendence of the Colonies, in which function his conduct will be long remembered.
The Bourbon Courts, who had not been able to persuade the Pope to dissolve the Order of the Jesuits, proceeded to extremities. The King of Naples seized Benevento; and France, possessing herself of Avignon, declared it unalienable from the Crown, and with reason.[120] It was not with the same foundation that she went on with hostilities against Corsica. Monsieur Francis, their Secretary here, said that, if we asked with the decency due to a great nation, France would tell us she did not mean to retain the possession—if we menaced, Monsieur de Choiseul would declare war. Their having no intention of keeping Corsica was false; and it was believed afterwards, that if we had spoken in a high tone, they would have desisted from the enterprise. The brave resistance of the natives, if supported by us, would soon have put the matter out of dispute. The French did not taste the project, nor could Choiseul lead the King so easily into a war as he desired.[121]
On the 18th, sentence was pronounced on Wilkes. For the North Briton, No. XLV., he was condemned to pay a fine of 500l. and to suffer imprisonment for ten months. For the Essay on Woman, 500l. more, and imprisonment for twelve months, to be computed from the expiration of the first ten. He was to find security for his good behaviour for seven years, himself being bound in 1000l., and two sureties in 500l. each. Rigorous as the sentence was, the Court had not dared to enforce it with its usual severity;[122] the pillory was for the first time omitted in a case of libel and blasphemy, and Wilkes triumphed by this manifestation of their terror. Anet, a poor honest priest, had been pilloried in this reign for writing against Moses. Some imputed his prosecution to Archbishop Secker,[123] who charged it on Lord Bute. Lord Bute denied it. Whoever was the prosecutor, Lord Mansfield had willingly executed the inquisitorial power.
The night before the publication of Wilkes’s sentence, he dispersed handbills to excite the mob to sedition; but so many late tumults had so terrified the citizens that they took little notice of him, and even were not averse to being protected by the Guards. After sentence, he published a violent advertisement against Lord Halifax, and bound himself never to accept place or pension. The paper which contained that declaration was so eagerly bought up, that by eight in the evening it was sold for half-a-crown. Lord Halifax stood in a worse predicament: it depended on a jury to give Wilkes what damages they should please against the Earl. No limits were set to them by law, nor could King or Parliament remit the fine, as it instantly became the property of the injured person. Faction might rate his injuries at a hundred thousand pounds. It was computed that the expenses attending the prosecution of Wilkes had already cost the Crown no less a sum.
The Bostonians were not more peaceable than the populace of London. A ship arriving there, and the custom-house officers, according to the direction of the late Act of Parliament, proceeding to visit it, the mob rose, drove the officers out of the town, forced them to take refuge in a frigate in the harbour, and pillaged their houses. Two regiments were ordered thither, the Cabinet-Council being unanimous in that opinion, except Lord Shelburne, who adhered to his former principle, that England had no right to tax America, unless represented. The Chancellor Camden excused his own change of opinion, which, he said, had been only speculation; now an Act of the Legislature had affirmed the right of taxation. Lord Bottetort, a very courtier, who was ruined in his fortune, was sent Governor to Virginia, where resided some of the ablest of the American patriots; yet in the two years that he lived to govern them, his soothing flattering manners had so wrought on the province, that his death was bewailed with the most general and affectionate concern.