stitution. I vow to God (to lord Mansfield, who defended the measures of the majority), I vow to God, I think your lordship equals them both in abilities. The house of lords is privileged 'to interfere, in the case of an invasion of the people's liberties; and the case of the county of Middle* sex is a case of such invasion.' "To the vote of the 17th of February 1769, wisely and fortunately no resistance was made but the resistance of logic and complaint; the murmur was loud and long, but vented itself in the legal mode permitted and justified by the constitution. The petitions presented to parliament were, by lord Chatham, styled honourable and manly; by the partisans of ministers seditious, by some of them even treasonable. "Petitions were succeeded by remonstrances, some of which were composed in language sufficiently intemperate: but the flame, which ministers had incautiously raised, they possessed not the courage to extinguish. They believed, probably, it would of itself in time consume and die away: they stood therefore wholly on the defensive, rejecting the propositions made in parliament to rescind the resolution, but carefully avoiding to punish those, without doors, who complained, however rudely, of its injustice. Mr. Wilkes in the mean while, within the walls of the king's bench prison, continued to pass a not inglorious confinement. From the time of his first election for Middlesex in March 1768, through the whole of the year 1769, and even far into 1772, he was the sole unrivalled political idol of the people, who lavished upon him all in their power to bestow, as if willing to prove that in England it was possible for an individual to be great and important through them alone. A subscription was opened for the payment of his debts, and 20,0001. are said in a few weeks to have been raised for that purpose, and for the discharging his fine. The society for the support of the Bill of Rights presented him with 300%. Gifts of plate, of wine, of household goods, were daily heaped upon him. An unknown patriot conveyed to him, in a handsomely embroidered purse, five hundred guineas. An honest chandler enriched him with a box containing of candles, the magic number of dozens, forty-five. High and low contended with each other who most should serve and celebrate him. Devices and emblems of all descriptions ornamented the trinkets conveyed to his prison: the most usual was the cap of liberty placed over his crest: upon others was a bird with expanded wings, hovering over a cage, beneath a motto, I love liberty. Every wall bore his name, and every window his portrait. In china, in bronze, or in marble, he stood upon the chimney-piece of half the houses of the metropolis: he swung upon the sign-post of every village, of every great road throughout the country. He was accustomed himself to tell with much glee of a monarchical old lady, behind whom he accidentally walked-looking up, she muṛmured, within his hearing, in mach spleen, He swings every where but where he ought:' he passed her, and, turning round, politely bowed. But the voice of disapprobation, whether of old women or of young, of men or of youths, was the voice of one amidst a thousand. The most grateful of all harmony, says Balzac, arises from the dissent ing voice of a single individual, when when mixed in the general concert of public applause: the appetite for popularity is not often distinguishing; it loves to number rather than select. Praise from the rivell'd lips of toothless, bald Decrepitude; and in the looks of lean And craving poverty; and in the bow Respectful of the smutch'd artificer; Is oft too welcome, and may much disturb The biass of the purpose.' What wonder then, if, accompanied by the praise also of the splendid, the polished, and the wealthy, it invigorate and confirm the purpose? Amongst the public bodies that testified their approbation of his spirit, the city of London took the lead. As early as the 2d of January 1769, he was elected alderman of the ward of Faringdon Without: by a mistake in closing the pollbooks the election however was pronounced void; but on the 27th of the same month he was declared duly elected. In November 1769, he brought his action against lord Halifax, for false imprisonment and the seizure of his papers: he obtained a verdict of 40007. On the 17th of April 1770, he was discharged from his imprisonment. On the 24th he was sworn as alderman. "In 1771, he seized the advantage afforded by his magisterial situation to make reprisals on the house of commons. A messenger having orders from the house to command the attendance of a printer (against whom complaint was made that, contrary to the privileges of parliament, he had published the debates of the house), attempted in vain to execute what was required. "After several fruitless visitations, the serjeant at arms reported that the printer was not to be met with. An address to the sovereign was drawn up, in pursuance of which a proclamation was issued, offering for the apprehension of the printer a considerable reward. He was apprehended, and the reward claimed. Mr. alderman Wilkes discharged him, as apprehended under an illegal warrant, and bound over the printer to prosecute the party apprehending him for an assault. He at the same time wrote a letter to lord Halifax, the secretary of state, acquainting him with what had been done. The same conduct was adopted by Mr. alderman Oliver, and the lord mayor, Brass Crosby, with relation to other parties similarly situated: nor did they stop here; in one instance the magistrates of the city not only discharged the person against whom the house of commons had directed their orders, but, as their joint act, committed the messenger who endeavoured to put them in force. The commons, fired at this contempt of their authority, proceeded to command the attendance of the magistrates.-The lord mayor and Mr. alderman Oliver, as members of the house, attended in their places, and justified the part which they had acted. They were committed to the Tower; and though brought up by habe.s corpus to the court of common pleas, where their case was argued at length, were remanded thither, and continued there till the close of the sessions. Their being, however, as members, within the jurisdiction of the house, was not applicable to Mr. Wilkes. In a let ter to the speaker, he peremptorily refused to comply with the order of attendance, except as representative of the county of Middlesex. The order was renewed, and renew, ed again, but it was not obeyed. At length he was ordered to be preB3 sent sent on the 8th of April, and an adjournment was then made to the 9th and thus, to use the words of Junius, by this mean, pitiful evasion' was the point given up. The wretchedness of this shift became still more apparent from the house having previously erased out of the Guildhall rota book an entry taken by the magistrates of their examination of the printer, for answering of whose charge they bound over the messenger to give security. These minutes were at the command of the house expunged by the lord mayor's clerk at the speaker's table. "If the power of the commons in parliament was such as to justify this interposition, it seemed to follow as a necessary consequence, that it was such as to justify the commitment of Mr. Wilkes, who with his colleagues had signed the minutes. If their jurisdiction were circumscribed, and extended only to that which was immediately a part of their body, it became difficult to say, what control they possessed over the judicial papers of the city magistracy. Lord Chatham, in the house of peers, denominated this interference the act, not of a parliament, but of a mob: and the metropolis at the time approved so much of the conduct of their magisterial officers, that at a court of common council thanks were voted to them, for having supported the privileges and franchises of the city, and having so firmly defended the British constitution. Mr. Wilkes triumphantly observed; that it was now evident the house had had enough of him.' His victory was decisive; and all that a well-wisher to the country could regret was, that it was a victory gained over the elected representatives of the nation, and that those representatives had, in part, merited their defeat. In "From this period, Mr. Wilkes's career was a course of good fortune. On the 3d of July 1771, he was chosen sheriff; in October 1774 he was elected lord mayor; and, parliament being suddenly dissolved in its sixth session, he was elected one of the new representatives of Middlesex, and took his seat unmolested in the December of the same year. He had during the whole of the last parliament publicly termed himself the real and legal representative of that county: its sheriffs too had, at two distinct calls of the house, returned him as such. 1774 he actually attended to be sworn, but the tender of the oath was refused, without a certificate from the clerk of the crown; which, naturally enough, was refused also. His election secure, he had now the privilege of calling names,' and the still more important privilege of pressing upon the house, in person, an oft repeated motion for rescinding the resolution of 1769. This for several years was not accompanied with complete success, though it was, at almost each attempt, attended with an augmentation in number of those who voted with him. In April 1775, he presented, as lord mayor, a remonstrance to the sovereign, from the city of London; and in July, a petition: both of them relating, not to his own peculiar case, but to the state of public affairs; both, however, hostile to the con duct of ministers. Having several times stood candidate for the chamberlainship of London, against alderman Hopkins, he, in 1779, upon the death of his opponent, obtained that, not dishonourable, and very lucrative, office. He obtained it by a most decided majority, and held held it, without interruption, for life. Amid these more substantial benefits, it is scarcely worth relating that a Mr. Temple left him, by will, 3001. for his strenuous en'deavours in the cause of freedom, and his noble defence of the con'stitution against a series of despots and wicked ministers;' and that the city of London presented him with a valuable silver cup, embossed with the death of Cæsar in the capitol. "In 1782, upon the dismission from office of the ministers who conducted the war against America, the obnoxious resolution was, at length, upon his own motion, expunged from the journals. This was the crown of those political labours, which more immediately concerned his own personal actions. He thenceforward deemed himself a fire burnt out.' Such are the main and more important incidents of the life of John Wilkes, a man, about whom, even were it unwilling, posterity necessarily must make inquiries; since the circumstances of his life are interwoven with the history of his time, and with the history of the constitution of his country. His after-life was passed in the punctual and faithful discharge of the duties attached to his office of chamberlain; in a temperate attention, as a senator, to national affairs and the proceedings of parliament; and in the cultivation of letters and the fine arts. treasurer of the city of London (such is the chamberlain) his accounts were kept with exactness, and his personal attendance was most regular, No officer subordi. nate to him, no person in any way concerned with his office, ever had occasion to wait one moment beyond the appointed time of daily business. Though careless of ex As penditure, he was yet tenacious of "In parliament, having steadily opposed through all its stages the fatal war with America, he maintained against those who supported it, his opposition, even when the war, the cause of that opposition, was at an end. He supported the peace of 1783; a peace inadequate to the hopes and wishes of the na tion; the terms of which, however, if not accepted, could only have been avoided by a new appeal to the sword. What Dr. Franklin since said is now well known; that he, and he believed most other statesmen of influence in America, would have advised and pressed for continued war, had the boundary ceded to the United States been seriously contested, or had the arti cle relative to the abandonment of the loyalists been rejected. From his situation in the city, or from respect to Mr. Hastings (the latter, a feeling, though wholly unconnected with the wisdom of the B4 measure measure, at present common to most men of understanding), Mr. Wilkes strenuously opposed Mr. Fox's East India bill. His opposition could scarcely be supposed to flow from any dread of diminishing the influence of the crown; nor in deed, in his speech to the house, does he touch upon any such topic. During the debates on the regency bill he was wholly neuter. Of the war with France, though then not in parliament, he, at least at its commencement, disapproved. Upon other questions, he supported that side which he naturally might be expected to support. For a more fair and equal representation of the people in parliament, he moved himself; and he voted affirmatively upon all similar propositions. He spoke more than once against the interference of peers in elections. The bill for the relief of protestant dissenting ministers, as well as that for the relief of Roman catholics, met with his warm concurrence. Having, however, none but mere personal interest, and being wholly unconnected with either of the great parties which in the beginning of the year 1790 filled the opposite benches of the house of commons, he, upon the dissolution of parlia ment, felt the hazard of risking an election too great, and prudently declined standing as a candidate. Though advanced in years, he showed no decay of intellect.His short congratulatory addresses spoken as chamberlain to those public characters, who received between 1790 and 1797 (the year of his death) the freedom of the city, were his last public exertions. That to vice-admiral Waldegrave was delivered on the 5th of December, not many days before he expired. He died on the 26th, aged seventy. He was interred in Grosvenor chapel, South Audley street. According to the directions of his will, eight labouring men, dressed in new mourning, bore his coffin from the door of the chapel to the vault. The bearers, by his will, received, in addition to their clothes, a guinea each. A tablet, its inscription written by himself, has this memorial: CHARACTER of CHARLES MACKLIN. [From MEMOIRS of his LIFE.] "Uhad to form himself as an ac INDER such masters Macklin tor. It must be confessed he had good opportunities; and, consider ing the many impediments thrown in his way from original disadvantages, he availed himself of such masters very creditably, both for his talents and industry. He was a long time, however, before he could make 8 any way on the theatre. He was, as we have before stated, at first rejected by Rich almost as totally inefficienta repulse which, to a mind less daring than Macklin's, would have deteried him from a second attempt: but he seemed to know the powers that then lay dormant in his mind; and the perseverance he was master of, and his future success |