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]