But his fortune was now decayed; old age was coming on, and he was glad to be chosen Chamberlain for London, (with a salary of nearly £4000 a-year.) On the fall of the North Cabinet, 1782, he moved that the resolution against him on the Journals should be expunged. The motion was carried; his victory was complete, and the remainder of his life was opulent and calm. That remainder, however, was brief, for he died in 1797, at the age of seventy.
Wilkes was a man of education, a man of wit, and a man of intrepidity. But his education had begun under an English sectary, and was finished in a foreign college—the first accounting for his republicanism, the next for his dissoluteness. But, though the man himself was worthless, his struggles were not unprofitable to the country. They fixed the popular attention on the principles of national liberty; they brought all the great constitutional questions into perpetual study. They rendered the public mind so sensitive to the possible encroachments of the Crown, or even of the Commons, that the future tyranny of any branch of the Legislature would be next to impossible. Let the merit of Wilkes be, that he drew a fence round the Constitution.
But Wilkes had a support unknown to the public of his time, yet amply divulged in these volumes. He appears to have kept up a constant correspondence with Earl Temple, the head of the Grenville interest; to have been anxious for his opinion on his publications, and to have depended on him, even for pecuniary resources, which probably were applied to those publications. The connection of Wilkes in public sentiment with the Grenvilles, was, of course, well known; but we doubt if the evidence of an intimate agency was understood before. In these letters, Wilkes twice draws on Lord Temple for £500; and as his lordship was opulent, and his client quite the reverse, it is likely that those calls were not the only instances of craving. But this connection largely accounts for the otherwise marvellous daring of Wilkes. He had the Grenvilles, Pitt, and their whole connection, then a most powerful party, to fall back upon. The Cabinet which sent him to prison one day, might be succeeded by the Cabinet which would open his gates the next; his patrons might be the possessors of all power, and in the mean time, however he might be persecuted, he was sure not to be crushed.
We have a letter from Lord Temple on this subject, which shows, by its wish to mislead suspicion, the nature of this intimacy. The letter is from a corrected and much obliterated draught, in Lord Temple's handwriting; and as the editor says, "The very guarded manner in which the letter is expressed, renders it probable that Lord Temple expected that it would be read in the Post Office before it reached its destination; for it cannot be supposed that he was ignorant of the connection between the North Briton and Wilkes. Almon (the printer) says, "Lord Temple was not ignorant of his friend's design, and certainly approved of it."
The letter thus begins—"As to public events, I am sorry to see that the paper hostilities are renewed with so high a degree of acrimony as now appears on all sides; and although I make it a rule not to agitate any matter of a political nature by the Post—this Argus, with, at least, a hundred eyes—yet, while my thoughts agree with Government, I may venture to hazard them, subject even to that inspection. I am quite at loss to guess through what channel the North Briton flows." The remainder is a critique on the paper, concluding, "as the N. B. will, I suppose, endeavour by every means to lie concealed, it will be impossible to ferret him out, and give him good advice, otherwise I am sure I could convince him."
The caution of this note shows at once the confidential nature of the connection, and the consciousness of the responsibility. But the subsequent letters of Lord Temple to Wilkes prove the continued and increased interest taken by his lordship in Wilkes's political productions. A paper, called the Monitor, whether edited by Wilkes or not, but evidently conceived by Lord Temple to be under his direction, having expressed strong opinions relative to the royal personages, his lordship writes as follows:—
"As all the sins of the Monitor against the ruling powers are principally charged upon our friend B., [Bradmore, his attorney,] and then, by way of rebound, upon two other persons, to whom the Monitor has been so kindly partial, it is of the more moment to avoid that sort of personality which regards any of the R. F., [royal family.] I am glad, therefore, my hint came, at least, time enough to prevent the publication of what would have filled up the whole measure of offence.... As to other matters, sportsmen, I suppose, are at liberty to pursue lawful game. I am only solicitous to have them not trespassers within the bounds of royal manors.... I hope I may be allowed to defray the loss and the expense of laying aside the paper you sent me."
This evidently implies that the paper was submitted to his lordship before publication.
The intercourse of a man like Wilkes, a notorious profligate, and impeached in public for his excess of profligacy, could not have been suffered by a man alive to character, but for some motive beyond the public eye; it was, of course, political, the common pursuit of an object, which is presumed to salve all sins.
A strong instance of their intimacy occurs in what Wilkes might have considered as his last act in this world. Lord Talbot, having been attacked in the North Briton, demanded an apology from Wilkes, who denied his lordship's right to question him. A challenge ensued, which produced a meeting, which produced an exchange of shots, without injury on either side. But Wilkes had given to his second, Colonel Berkeley, a note to be delivered, in case of his fall, to Earl Temple. This note Berkeley desired to return to Wilkes on the close of the affair; but it was forwarded to Temple, "as a proof of the regard and affection he bore your lordship, at a minute which might have been his last."