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the blunders of Administration, with respect to Falkland’s Islands, &c. Townshend views with alarm an assortment of the events, momentous and trivial, that had agitated the public mind in the preceding decade.
As to Falkland’s Islands, west of the southern tip of South America, a dispute over their possession nearly brought on war between Great Britain and Spain in 1770-71. After a display of force by Spain and a demand for restitution by the British government, diplomatic exchanges resulted in a conciliation that was unpopular in England (The Annual Register for 1771, “History of Europe,” chs. i-v). At the request of the ministers, Dr. Johnson wrote a spirited defence of their conduct, Thoughts on the Late Transactions respecting Falkland’s Islands, 1771.
The Middlesex Election was a remarkable exploit in the career of John Wilkes, who in 1768 returned from France still an outlaw for his offence in North Briton No. 45, and was elected to Parliament for the county of Middlesex. Expelled before he could take his seat, he was thrice re-elected and as many times expelled. After his fourth victory at the polls Parliament declared his opponent, the ministerial candidate, duly elected. This breach of electoral rights led to street-rioting, protracted debates in and out of Parliament, and, eventually, the formation of a Radical party. See Horace Bleackley, Life of John Wilkes, 1917, chs. xii-xiii.
The revolt of Corsica under Pasquale Paoli against the French, who had purchased the island from Genoa in 1768, won wide public sympathy in England. The leading advocate of British intervention in favor of the Corsicans was James Boswell. See Chauncey Brewster Tinker, Nature’s Simple Plan, Princeton, 1922, ch. ii.
The massacre in St. George’s Fields, 10 May 1768, occurred when a crowd of London citizens waiting for Wilkes to attend the opening of Parliament taunted a detachment of foot-guards into firing on them. Several persons were killed and about a dozen wounded. This “massacre” was the forerunner and partly the inspiration of that in King Street, Boston, two years later.
Mr. Horne’s imprisonment resulted from the zeal of that radical parson in the cause of America. The Rev. John Horne (1736-1812), afterwards Horne Tooke, wrote and circulated an advertisement for the Constitutional Society, June 1775, stating that 100l. was to be raised for “the relief of the widows, orphans, and aged parents of our beloved American fellow-subjects, who, faithful to the character of Englishmen, preferring death to slavery, were, for that reason only, inhumanly murdered by the king’s troops” at Lexington and Concord on the 19th of April. In July 1777 Horne was brought to trial before Lord Mansfield, found guilty, and in November sentenced to a year’s imprisonment and a fine of 200l. (The Annual Register for 1777, “Appendix to the Chronicle,” pp. 234-245).
The fatal example of the Justitia is an allusion to the Justitia hulk, a convict-ship stationed at Woolwich by an act of 1776 for the purpose of dredging the Thames.
The frequent exhibition of the Beggar’s Opera evidently alludes to remarks by Townshend that had excited mirth in a debate on a bill for licensing a play-house in Birmingham, 29 April 1777. Townshend opposed the bill because, he said,
He had heard from good authority that the theatre licensed at Manchester, in consequence of a similar application, had done a great deal of mischief already: nor could it be wondered at, if we consider what pieces are sometimes represented, which, not being new, are not subject to the controul of the Lord Chamberlain: the Beggar’s Opera, for instance, which had brought more unhappy people to the gallows, than any one thing he could name. As to the country gentlemen, surely this was not such an age of domestic retirement, but what they might find sufficient amusement in visiting their neighbours in the summer, without wanting to frequent a theatre.... Considering, then, the circumstances of Birmingham as a great manufacturing and trading town, depending on the industry and frugality of the poorer class of people, he was of opinion it would be highly improper to license any theatre there (Parliamentary History, XIX, 202).