Lord Bute’s pretended abdication of business.--The “Triumvirate”
(Mr. Grenville, Lord Egremont, and Lord Halifax) who succeeded
him.--Character of those personages.--Grenville’s ingratitude
to Lord Bute.--The memorable Forty-fifth Number of the “North
Briton.”--Wilkes apprehended on a General Warrant.--Committed
close prisoner to the Tower.--His spirit and wit.--His bad
character.--He is taken by Habeas Corpus to the Court of Common
Pleas.--His Speech.--He is discharged from confinement.--Chief
Justice Pratt.--Triumph of Wilkes.--His endeavour to obtain
Warrants against the Secretaries of State.--Lord Temple.--
Discontent in the Cider counties.--Mortifications of the Court.--
Wilkes challenged by Forbes.--Sudden Death of Lord Egremont.
The Parliament had risen on April 19th, everything being then outwardly
settled. The Favourite, to give some colour to his pretended illness,
and to his still more pretended abdication of business, went to drink
the waters at Harrowgate; having first protested that he would neither
meddle, nor offer to intercept or direct the channel of the King’s
favours. Trusting to this declaration, there started up a triumvirate,
who not only seemed to be, but who really thought themselves, possessed
of the whole power of government. They seemed, too, to have divided
amongst themselves the whole portion of the Favourite’s pride. These
were Mr. Grenville, his brother-in-law, Lord Egremont, and Lord
Halifax: the two latter, Secretaries of State.
Mr. Grenville[334] had hitherto been known but as a fatiguing orator
and indefatigable drudge, more likely to disgust than to offend.
Beneath this useful unpromising outside lay lurking great abilities:
courage so confounded with obstinacy that there was no drawing the line
betwixt them; good intentions to the public, without one great view;
much economy for that public, which in truth was the whole amount of
his good intentions; excessive rapaciousness and parsimony in himself;
infinite self-conceit, which produced impossibility of instructing,
convincing, or setting him right; implacability in his temper; and a
total want of principles in his political conduct; for, having long
professed himself uncommonly bigoted to the doctrines of liberty, he
became the staunchest champion of unwarrantable power. As all his
passions were expressed by one livid smile, he never blushed at the
variations in his behaviour. His ingratitude to his benefactor, Lord
Bute, and his reproaching Mr. Pitt with the profusion of a war which
he had sometimes actively supported, and always tacitly approved,
while holding a beneficial place,[335] were but too often paralleled
by the crimes of other men; but scarce any man ever wore in his face
such outward and visible marks of the hollow, cruel, and rotten heart
within.
Lord Egremont[336] was a composition of pride, ill-nature, avarice, and
strict good-breeding; with such infirmity in his frame, that he could
not speak truth on the most trivial occasion. He had humour, and did
not want sense; but had neither knowledge of business, nor the smallest
share of parliamentary abilities.[337]
Of the three, Lord Halifax[338] was by far the weakest, and at the
same time the most amiable man. His pride, like Lord Egremont’s, taught
him much civility. He spoke readily and agreeably, and only wanted
matter and argument. His profusion in building, planting, and on a
favourite mistress, had brought him into great straits, from which he
sought to extricate himself by discreditable means. He aimed at virtues
he could not support, and was rather carried away by his vices than
sensible of them.
I have mentioned Mr. Grenville’s ingratitude to Lord Bute, which
implies preceding obligation. He had owed solely and entirely to Lord
Bute the rich reversion of a Tellership of the Exchequer for his son.
Lord Bute perhaps thought it was no light additional favour to have
made over his power into Mr. Grenville’s hands. But the latter had
not forgotten how contemptuously he had been set aside the last year;
and, as Lord Bute by no means observed his promise of abstaining from
exerting his influence at Court, it is but candid to allow that Lord
Bute diminished the favour by not adhering to the terms on which he
bestowed it. Be that how it would, Grenville had not sat a month at the
Treasury, before, remembering the affront and forgetting the reversion,
he set himself by all manner of means to lessen the profits of the
other reversion which Lord Bute had procured for his own son. Thus
auspiciously commenced the new administration!
As soon as it was known that Lord Bute intended to quit, Wilkes had
forborne to publish his North Britons; waiting to see the consequences
of the change. The tone he had given did not, however, stop. In
the City they toasted to Wit, Beauty, Virtue, and Honour, ironic
designations of the King, Queen, Princess Dowager, and Lord Bute.
The North Briton too was soon resumed, and on the 23rd of April was
published the memorable _forty-fifth_ number, which occasioned so much
trouble to the author, procured so essential a correction of loose
and till then undefined power, and produced so many silly conundrums
and wretched witticisms on the number itself.[339] This famous paper
gave a flat lie to the King himself, for having, by the Favourite’s
suggestion, assumed the honour of obtaining peace for the King of
Prussia.[340]
Nothing could be more just than the satire, nothing more bold than
the unmeasured liberty with which it was uttered.[341] The Prussian
monarch must have read with scorn, and Europe with laughter, so absurd
a boast as our vaunting to have saved an ally whom we had betrayed and
abandoned. Ridicule might have handled this vain-glorious falsehood
with full severity and full security, without passing the bounds which
law allows. But when Parliament had connived at the treachery, could
it be supposed that it would suffer a private hand to wield the bolt
which had slept in the custody of so many corrupt representatives? The
lie given in print to the Crown, by an obscure man, was an unparalleled
license. If the King had a particle of power left, or his servants,
or his magistrates, of spirit, such an insult could not be passed
over. The rashness of his servants contrived to involve the Crown and
themselves in inextricable difficulties, and to make the unwarrantable
behaviour of Wilkes appear innocent, when compared with the excesses
they committed themselves.
I do not mean to lead the reader through the maze of vague and
barbarous law-proceedings, which sprang out of this transaction. It
did but lay open the undefined or unmeaning magazine of terms which
the chicanery or contradictions of ages had heaped together, and it
proved that the Crown and the subject might be justified in almost
any excesses. The right hand of Nonsense armed the King, and her left
defended the subject. The lawyers on either side were employed in
discovering springes or loop-holes.
After a week’s deliberation Wilkes was seized, April 30th, by three
messengers, on a _general warrant_, signed by Lord Halifax. They had
been ordered to apprehend him at midnight, but abstained till noon of
the 30th. Churchill, his friend, then with him, slipped out of the
house, either to secure himself or to give the alarm. Mr. Wood,[342]
the Under-Secretary, and Philip Carteret Webbe,[343] a most villanous
tool and agent in any iniquity, seized his papers, though he had
received intimation time enough to convey away the most material. He
was conducted to Lord Halifax’s, where he behaved with much firmness
and confidence, and grievously wounded the haughty dignity attempted to
be assumed by Lord Egremont. They committed him close prisoner to the
Tower; a severity rarely, and never fit to be practised but in cases of
most dangerous treason. This treatment served but to increase Wilkes’s
spirit and wit. He desired to be confined in the same room where Sir
William Windham, Lord Egremont’s father, had been kept on a charge of
Jacobitism; and said he hoped, if there could be found such a chamber
in the Tower, that he might not be lodged where any Scotchman had been
prisoner.
About the same time, being told of the reasons alleged by the King
of Spain[344] for setting aside his eldest son, two of which were,
that the Prince squinted, and did not believe the mysteries of our
holy religion; then said Wilkes, “I can never be King of Spain, for I
squint, and believe none of those mysteries.”
The rigour of the commitment gave serious alarm; but, the very day on
which it happened, Wilkes’s friends applied to the Court of Common
Pleas for his habeas corpus, expecting it from Lord Chief Justice
Pratt, and scorning or despairing of it from Lord Mansfield.
Lord Temple instantly resorted to the Tower, but was denied admittance
to the prisoner; a restraint the ministers found the very next day
they must take off. Lord Temple then returned to visit Wilkes, as did
the Duke of Grafton and some few others of rank; but, in general, the
prisoner’s character was so bad, and his conduct so rash and unguarded,
that few who were either decent or cautious cared to be concerned with
him.
The habeas corpus being granted, Wilkes was carried to the Court of
Common Pleas, May 3rd. He spoke for an hour, said “attempts had been
made to corrupt him, now to persecute him; he had been worse treated
than any rebel Scot.” The crowd in Westminster-hall gave a great shout;
the Chief Justice, with great dignity, reproved them. The judges took
time to deliberate. The people were profuse of their acclamations to
the sufferer.
On the 5th, he wrote a letter to his daughter (a child whom he had
placed in a convent in France for her education), and sent it open to
Lord Halifax; it congratulated her on living in a _free_ country. He
was the same day turned out of his commission in the militia.
On the 6th, being again conveyed from the Tower to Westminster-hall,
Pratt and the other judges of the Common Pleas unanimously discharged
him from his confinement; the Chief Justice delivering their opinions,
and dismissing him on his parliamentary privilege, “_because_, though
privilege of Parliament does not hold against a breach of the peace, it
does against what only _tends_ to a breach of the peace. The case of
the seven bishops was quoted; the judges Wright, Holloway, and Allibone
had been against them. Allibone, said Pratt, was a Papist; Wright and
Holloway had been appointed for the occasion; but Powel, an honest man,
had declared for the bishops. On the other hand, he quoted a recent
case of Lord Tankerville, who having been arrested on a prosecution for
bribery in the election for Windsor, the Lords had declared it a breach
of privilege”--we shall find how much less tender the Commons were of
_their_ privileges.
The Chief Justice had no sooner granted the enlargement of Wilkes,
than two of the King’s serjeants presented letters to the Court, from
the Attorney and Solicitor Generals, demanding to be admitted into
the Court, as the case concerned the King’s interest. The Attorney,
it is said, has a right of interfering in any Court where the King’s
interest is agitated; it is doubted whether the Solicitor has the same
prerogative. To both Pratt answered, that they had applied too late.
Now did the Court feel the consequence of having forced Pratt to be
Chief Justice against his will.
This triumph quite overset the little discretion of which Wilkes had
been master. He seemed to put himself into the situation of a King,
who, not content with the outworks with which the law has surrounded
his person, attempts to employ the law as offensive artillery.
Affecting to have been robbed of moveables when his papers were seized,
Wilkes entered into a virulent controversy, by letter, with the
Secretaries of State; and even endeavoured, though in vain, to obtain
warrants for searching their houses. This wild conduct did not help his
cause. His next step fell more perniciously on his own head. He erected
a printing-press in his own house; and, against the remonstrances
of Lord Temple, who never wanted fear where there was room for it,
and who had no taste for anything that did not lead directly home to
faction, indulged himself in realizing those sallies of his humour and
intemperance, which are scarcely excusable when transient and confined
to the jollity of intoxicated moments at table. The Court regarding
Lord Temple as the instigator, not as the Socrates, of this Alcibiades,
removed him from the lord-lieutenancy of the county of Buckingham.
The printers, who had been vexed in their business by the orders of
the Secretaries of State, and encouraged by the victory of Wilkes,
prosecuted the messengers, and obtained damages to the value of 300_l._
The same spirit spread into the west. In the cider counties they
dressed up a figure in Scotch plaid, with a blue riband, to represent
the Favourite, and this figure seemed to lead by the nose an ass
royally crowned. At the same time they voted instructions to their
members to try to obtain a repeal of the act. The circumstance of
the act being passed under so unpopular an administration was most
unfortunate. It had taken thirty years to open the eyes of mankind
to the benefits of excise: the only, at least the best, method of
improving the revenue without imposing new burthens. Being started at
so ungracious a moment, the old prejudices were industriously revived.
The Court at the same time met with some mortifications in their
pursuit of congratulatory addresses on the peace, which they sedulously
promoted. One Judge Perrot[345] was so servile as to recommend it from
the bench on the circuit. The Duke of Newcastle and Lord Hardwicke, the
one Chancellor, the other High Steward of the University of Cambridge,
refused to go to St. James’s with the address of that body. Allen,[346]
the ostentatious patron of Pope and Warburton, the latter of whom had
married his natural daughter, prevailed on the city of Bath to thank
the King for the _adequate_[347] peace, and had himself the insolence
or folly to send that address, so profligately worded, to Mr. Pitt,
with whom he had maintained a mutual intercourse of flattery. Mr. Pitt
disdained to present their compliment to the King, and even declared he
would represent their city no more.
Wilkes, in the meantime, had gone to France to visit his daughter.
There he received a challenge from one Forbes[348] an outlawed Scot in
the French service, who could not digest the torrents of abuse which
Wilkes had poured forth on his country. Alexander Murray, brother
of Lord Elibank, and an outlaw too since the Westminster Election
in 1751,[349] was the go-between in this quarrel, not without being
suspected of inflaming it. Wilkes accepted the defiance for the next
morning, but, when Forbes called on him, affected to laugh it off,
saying, he was bound to fight Lord Egremont by preference before any
other man. When that excuse availed not, he asked Forbes if he had
provided a second; to which the other replied, such preparation was
too dangerous in France. Altercations thickened, till at last the
lieutenant de police was sent for, who obliged Forbes to promise not to
proceed any farther.
Had the duel with Lord Egremont been seriously intended, from that too
would Wilkes have been delivered; for the earl, who was of a sanguine
and apoplectic complexion, of which he had felt attacks, and though
warned in vain to moderate the indulgence of his palate, to which he
was ungovernably prone, died suddenly on the 21st of August, and put an
end to a triumvirate which had involved their master and themselves in
such a labyrinth of knotty and undecided questions.