derived its right to be in India at all from the charter obtained from the imperial government. It could not be permitted to a mere trading company to establish a right of sovereignty independent of their own government. But Chatham saw that the sooner this question was determined, the easier and the better. It was necessary for the authority of England, as well as for the protection of the nations, that the rights of the crown should be asserted. The accounts which were continually arriving from India were of the most unbounded rapacity and oppression of the company's servants; the honour of England was concerned to take the unhappy Hindoos out of the hands of a tribe of greedy and vulgar factors, who had no regard to anything but extortion and the amassing guilty wealth. The motion of Beckford was opposed by Grenville and Charles Yorke. What is singular, Burke, destined in after years to expose the long train of horrors and crimes which the constant sway of the company had produced, at this time opposed the motion for inquiry with all his eloquence, and with all the revived resentment to Chatham which had just received its birth. He made no doubt of the question originating with Chatham; and, in no obscure language, intimated that he had kept his views on this great topic from both Townshend and Conway. He described Chatham as a person so sublimely and immeasurably high, that the greatest abilities and the most amiable dispositions amongst his colleagues could not gain access to him—a being before whom thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, and powers, "waving his hand over the whole treasury bench behind him," all veil their faces with their wings! It was true that Chatham had not let Townshend or Conway into the full knowledge of his plans regarding the India question, but they were aware of the general nature of it, and were secretly opposed to it. The motion for inquiry was carried, and the company, at a full court, passed an unanimous vote recommending the directors, instead of opposing government, to endeavour to treat with them for terms. duke of Grafton became estranged; Charles Townshend, who had as much ambition and eccentricity as talent, began to show airs, and aim at supremacy. Grafton implored Chatham to come to town if possible, and when that was declared impracticable, to allow him to go down, and consult with him in his sick chamber. But he was informed that the minister was equally unable to move or to consult. Under these unfortunate circumstances, Charles Townshend, as chancellor of the exchequer, proposed the annual rate for the land-tax. He called for the amount of four shillings in the pound, the rate at which it had stood during the war; but he promised next year to reduce it to three. The country gentlemen grumbled, representing that in years of peace it was commonly reduced to three and sometimes to two. Grenville saw his advantage-his great opponent away-the landholders ready to rebel, and he moved an amendment that, instead of next year, the reduction should take place immediately. Dowdeswell supported him, and the amendment was carried by two hundred and six votes against a hundred and eighty-eight. The opposition was astonished at its own success, and yet it need not; they who had to vote were chiefly land-owners, and men who did not like taxing themselves. As lord Chesterfield observed, "All the landed gentlemen had bribed themselves with this shilling in the pound." The opposition was in ecstacies: it was the first defeat of ministers on a financial question since the days of Walpole, and in our time, the chancellor would have resigned. The blow seemed to rouse Chatham. Three days after this event, on the 2nd of March, he arrived in town, though swathed in flannel, and scarcely able to move hand or foot. He was in the highest state of indignation against Townshend, not only as regarded the land-tax, by which half a million was struck from the revenue of the year, but because he had been listening to overtures from the directors of the India House, calculated to damage the great scheme of Indian administration which Chatham was contemplating. He declared that the chancellor of the exchequer and himIn the Christmas recess Chatham hastened to Bath, to self could not hold office together. A few days, and Townsimprove his health for the campaign of the ensuing session; hend would have been dismissed from office, and the country but when parliament met again, in the middle of January, might have escaped one of its greatest shocks; but, un1767, ministers were in consternation at his not reappear- fortunately, the malady of Chatham returned with redoubled ing. His cabinet was such a medley, composed of so many violence, and in a new and more terrible form. He was materials, drawn from the quarters of his enemies, that his obliged to refuse seeing any one on state affairs. For a time best friends despaired of its working without his presence. his colleagues and the king were urgent for some communiTidings came that he was suffering from a severe attack of cation with him, supposing that his illness was merely his his old tormentor, the gout; and weeks passed on, and he old enemy, the gout, and there was much dissatisfaction still was absent. At length they were greatly relieved by amongst his friends, and exultation amongst his enemies, hearing that, though still in a bad condition, he was on the at what was deemed his crotchety humour in so entirely way. The good news quickly changed. He had reached shutting himself up under such critical circumstances, when the Castle Inn, at Marlborough, where he lay for a fort- his own fame, his own great plans, and the welfare of the night, in such a state that he was utterly incapacitated for state, were all at stake. But, in time, it came to be underbusiness. The duke of Grafton and Beckford, who were his stood that this refusal to see any one, or to comply with most devoted adherents, were thunder-struck. They found the repeated and earnest desires of the king, expressed in it impossible to keep in order the heterogeneous elements of letters to him, to admit Grafton, as one of his best friends, the cabinet. All the hostile qualities, which would have or to examine important papers, was no voluntary matter, lain still under the hand of the great magician, bristled up, but the melancholy result of his ailment. It seems to have and came boldly out. The spirit of Bedford, of Newcastle, been the fact, that anxious, when at Marlborough, to get to and of Rockingham, was active in their partisans, and town and resume the reins of business, his physician, Dr. gathered courage to do mischief. Lord Shelburne and the | Addington, had given him some strong medicines to disperse A.D. 1767.] SERIOUS ILLNESS OF CHATHAM. the gout. These had succeeded in driving it from his extremities, but only to diffuse it all over the system, and to fix it on the nerves. The consequence was that the physical frame, oppressed by this incubus of disease, oppressed the mighty mind of Pitt, and reduced him to a condition of nervous imbecility. Some people imagined that he had become deranged, but that was not the case; he was suffering no imaginary terrors or illusions, but an utter prostration of his intellectual vigour. Lord Chesterfield expressed his condition, when being told that Chatham was disabled by the gout, he replied, "No, a good fit of the gout would cure him!" That is, one of his usual attacks of gout in his extremities, would be a proof that it had quitted its present insidious hold on his whole system. Whately, the secretary of Grenville, thus describes his condition, as obtained from members of the family: "Lord Chatham's state of health is certainly the lowest state of dejection and debility that mind and body can be in. He sits all the day leaning on his hands, which he supports on the table; does not permit any person to remain in the room; knocks when he wants anything; and, having made his wants known, gives a signal, without speaking, to the person who answered to his call to retire." The account given by the duke of Grafton, who obtained a brief interview with him, in May, on the most urgent plea, is quite in accordance with this of Grenville's secretary. "Though I expected," he says, "to find lord Chatham very ill indeed, his situation was different from what I had imagined. His nerves and spirits were affected to a dreadful degree, and the sight of his great mind bowed down and thus weakened by disorder, would have filled me with grief and concern if I had not long borne a sincere attachment to his person and character." At times, the slightest mention of business would throw him into violent agitations; at others, when such matters were carefully kept from him, he would remain calm, and almost cheerful, but utterly incapable of exerting his intellect. In this lamentable condition he continued for upwards of a year. 57 had at other times made such gigantic efforts. The very circumstances of his setting out from Burton Pynsent to town, when still so unfit, and of his seeking a medical means of enabling him to go on and attend to business, are of themselves sufficient proofs of his anxiety to have acted, had he been able. Such a strange calamity could not but be attended with the most mischievous consequences. Chatham was obliged to leave town, and seek retirement and a purer air at North End, near Hampstead. Townshend, who in a few days would have ceased to be chancellor of the exchequer, still retained office, and now showed more freely the wild and erratic character of his genius. He was a singular and meteorlike combination of ambition, brilliancy, wit, levity, and recklessness. He more and more indulged himself in eloquent but startling speeches in the house; and by one, delivered after a dinner-party at his own house, and thence called the "champagne speech," he gave a loose to all the whimsies of his fancy, and astonished the whole country. In it he quizzed and satirised both himself and his colleagues, as well as all other parties. Horace Walpole says that it was "a torrent of wit, parts, humour, knowledge, absurdity, vanity, and fiction, brightened by all the graces of comedy, the happiness of allusion and quotation, and the buffoonery of farce." He had long been preparing it; and Walpole says that for himself, "it was the most singular pleasure he ever enjoyed." Such a man was evidently out of his sphere; he would have made an admirable comic actor, but was a fatal chancellor of the exchequer. There were now two questions of almost unprecedented importance before the government, those of India and America. Chatham was away, and Townshend plunged into them with all his inconsiderate vivacity. The East India Company had proposed to make certain overtures to government, in order to stay the searching inquiry and inevitable measures which Chatham would have introduced for the recognition of the rights of the crown. Nothing could be more fortunate for the company than Chatham's illness. They drew Townshend into interviews with them during the recess, and flattered his vanity with the prospect of his achieving the settlement without the great minister. They now presented a string of propositions to the house of commons, which, instead of allowing the government to approach to anything like the grand plan of Chatham's for defining and fixing the rights of the country over India, and for regulating the company's conduct towards the natives, merely offered an annual payment of four hundred thousand pounds to government, on condition that the charter was continued till 1800; that the internal duties on tea should be lowered; the monopoly of trade to the Indies be secured for that term to the company; and that government should use its influence with France to During this time the public and many of his friends expressed the utmost impatience, not comprehending the nature of the case; and his enemies demanded why, being incapable or indisposed to discharge his duties, he did not resign, but continued to receive his salary. These complaints have been repeated by historians; but the simple fact was, that he was as incapable of thinking of his salary as of resigning his duties. Once, indeed, he had sufficient command of his energies to request, in January, 1768, that the king would resume the privy seal; but his majesty would not hear of it, saying that his name alone enabled the government to go on better than it could without it. And thus, as the Cid Ruy Diaz, though dead, was carried into the field of battle on his horse, and thus, by his imagined presence, put the enemy to flight, the name of Chatham, in some degree, still gave force to the adminis-procure the demands of the company for the conveyance of tration of affairs. Such is the explanation of this episode in the life of Chatham, on account of which so much censure has been heaped upon him, as a wayward and intractable man. As if he were likely to be so regardless of his own fame, of his great designs, and of the country's prosperity, for which he the French prisoners home, and with Spain for the payment of the Manilla ransom. In such terms was this question settled for the present, though not without strong opposition in the lords; and so elated was the company, that its stock immediately rose six per cent., and the proprietors raised their dividends to ten and then twelve and a half per cent. There was a danger of another jobbing mania, like that of the South Sea Bubble, and government was obliged to step in, and, by a bill, restrained the annual dividends to ten per cent. This was bad enough; but the proceedings with regard to America were far worse, and put the finish to the mad policy of Grenville. Grenville, in fact, was again the instigator of the fresh sins. He proposed that, notwithstanding the resistance of the Americans, they should be compelled to maintain the troops employed there, and that taxes of some kind should be levied on them to the amount of four hundred thousand pounds per annum. Wise men would, at all events, have let the subject rest till the irritation occasioned by the stamp act had subsided, and until the best mode of proceeding could have had full and mature consideration. The temper of the Americans still continued most excited and antagonistic. They still refused to find the vinegar, salt, &c., required by the mutiny act, and the assembly of New York had set aside the act altogether, by a decree of its own. Even Chatham had been roused from his lethargy by the accounts of the spirit of the colonists to condemn their conduct in the severest terms. In reply to their continued remonstrances against the mutiny act, he declared that they would, by their violence and ingratitude, bring destruction on their heads. His friend Beckford protested that the devil possessed the minds of the Americans; that Grenville's act had raised the foul fiend, and that only a prudent firmness would lay him for ever. To such prudence Townshend was a stranger. He had lost half a million from the revenue by the reduction of the land tax, and he pledged himself to the house to recover it from the Americans. He declared that he fully agreed with George Grenville, even in the principle of the stamp act, and ridiculed the distinction set up by Chatham, and admitted by Franklin, of the difference betwixt internal and external taxation. This was language calculated to enrage Chatham, could anything at that moment have touched him; it was more calculated to fire the already heated minds of the colonists, who, the more they reflected on Chatham's lofty language on the supreme authority of the mother country in the declaratory act, the more firmly they repudiated it. The speech of Townshend, and his proposition to lay his new taxes in the shape of import duties, which Franklin had declared were quite allowable, and could not be objected to by his constituents the Americans, greatly alarmed lord Shelburne, who, as one of the secretaries of state, was daily receiving news of the ominous state of public feeling in the colonies. He declared that he could not understand the conduct and language of Townshend. To lay import duties on glass, paper, painters' colours, and tea, which would produce only thirty-five thousand or forty thousand pounds a-year, was certainly to endanger a fierce excitement for a most paltry profit. He considered the language in which this was proposed the most unlikely to make the impost go down with the Americans. But Gerard Hamilton, best known as "single-speech Hamilton, who knew the colonies well, warned the ministers of the mine they were rushing upon in strong terms. "There are," he said, "two hundred thousand men in these colonies fit not only to bear arms, but, having arms in their posseSsion, unrestrained by the game laws. In Massachusetts there is an express law, by which every man is obliged to have a musket, a pound of powder, and a pound of bullets, always by him; so there is nothing wanting but a knapsack, or old stocking, which will do as well, to equip an army for marching, and nothing more than a Sartorius or a Spartacus at their head, requisite to beat your troops and your custom-house officers out of the country, and set your laws at defiance. There is no saying what their leaders may put them upon; but, if they are active, clever people, and love mischief as well as I do peace and quiet, they will furnish matter of consideration to the wisest amongst you, and perhaps dictate their own terms at last, as the Roman people formerly did in their famous secession upon the Sacred Mount. For my own part, I think you have no right to tax them, and that every measure built upon the supposed right stands upon a rotten foundation, and must consequently tumble down, perhaps upon the heads of the workmen." This was clear, sound sense, and completely prophetic in its soundness. There was another imminent danger which lord Shelburne glanced at-that France and Spain, eager for avenging themselves of the disgrace and losses which Chatham had piled upon them, would be likely to step in, should there be a breach with America, and assist to foil us. But so little did these dangers present themselves to men generally, so little did they, even the greatest of them, Chatham and Burke, see clearly what Hamilton saw-that we had no right to tax them, but through their own representatives-that this bill passed with the utmost indifference, and was immediately followed by two others, one putting these and all other duties and customs that might be laid on the American colonies, under the management of the king's resident commissioners; and the other prohibiting the legislature of New York from passing any act, for any purpose whatever, until the mutiny act should be complied with. This last act was the only one complied with by the colonists, whilst, at the same time, it no doubt strengthened their opposition to the rest. The session was closed with the voting of annuities of eight thousand pounds a-year each to the king's brothers, the duke of York, who soon after died, as supposed, in consequence of excess, at Modena, in Italy, and the dukes of Gloucester and Cumberland; and parliament was prorogued on the 2nd of July. But through the whole of this session the opposition, encouraged by the absence of Chatham, had kept up a continual system of annoyance, and rendered the ministry without a head anything but a bed of roses. General Conway was heartily disgusted with his position, and anxious to resign. He declared that no life could be so unsupportable as a ministerial one at that moment, and that it was impossible for any one, who had not gone through the ordeal, to form any conception of the mancuvres, intrigues, and cabals, that prevailed; that there were so many great men in the world, and so many little ones belonging to them, that it was impossible to do the country's business properly. So far had the opposition prevailed A.D. 1768.] CORRUPTION IN THE ROTTEN BOROUGHS. through the illness of Chatham, that in the debate in the lords on the Massachusetts bill, the majority was only twosixty-five against sixty-three. The ministers, but especially the duke of Grafton, who took the place and cares of Chatham, were in the most terrible anxieties. Nor was the king less so. He wrote the most pressing letters to Chatham to give them, if possible, his advice, and offered himself to call. Through the whole he showed the most extraordinary firmness, declaring that, though none of his ministers should stand by him, he would not truckle. No sooner was the session at an end, than it was deemed necessary to endeavour to make some alterations in the cabinet. Townshend had retired to his house in Oxfordshire, and was supposed to be planning arrangements with some of the great whig houses which should place him at the head of the administration. To counteract this he empowered Grafton to open communications with the marquis of Rockingham, and this led to others with the dukes of Bedford, Newcastle, Richmond, and Portland, the earl of Sandwich, and viscount Weymouth. But these negotiations were defeated by the duke of Bedford and Lord Temple, as well as Grenville, who had also been invited to co-operate, insisting on America being compelled by force, if necessary, to submit to the enactments of this country. To this Rockingham objected, as well as to the duke of Bedford putting out general Conway to make way for his creature Rigby, whom he was always dragging after him. In the midst of these abortive attempts, Townshend died on the 4th of September, of a putrid fever, in the fortysecond year of his age. This event necessitated some changes. Lord North was prevailed upon to take Townshend's place, as chancellor of the exchequer; Thomas Townshend, a cousin of Charles Townshend, taking that of lord North, the paymastership of the forces, and Mr. Jenkinson succeeding Thomas Townshend as one of the lords of the treasury. General Conway and lord Northington retired, though Conway, at the express desire of the king, remained in the cabinet, and as spokesman of the house of commons. Again the duke of Bedford was applied to. He refused office for himself, for his health was failing, and he had just lost his only son by a violent death; but he consented, instead of the everlasting Rigby, to introduce lord Weymouth as secretary of state, Rigby still having a snug berth. Lord Gower was made lord president, and lord Hillsborough was installed in a new office, that of secretary for the colonies, suggested by the increased business in that department. Many of these arrangements would have been most unwelcome to Chatham, had he been in a condition to notice them; but he continued sunk in his depression, and the present ministry took the name of the Grafton ministry instead of the Chatham, though he still retained the privy seal. Parliament met on the 24th of November, but little real business was transacted. The chief matter was the socalled Nullum Tempus Bill, introduced by Sir George Saville, one of the members for Yorkshire. The measure arose out of private enmities, but seriously affected the property of the crown. Amongst the vast estates given by William III. to his favourite Dutch follower, the duke of 59 Portland, out of the crown lands, was a fine estate including the Honour of Penrith. Contiguous to this lay the forest of Inglewood, which Portland, like so many of our nobility, had quietly appropriated, though not comprised within the terms of his grant. Sir James Lowther, a man of high tory principles, and of arbitrary temper, as well as of enormous landed estates in Cumberland and Westmoreland, taking advantage of the duke of Portland being now in opposition, applied for and obtained a lease of the king's interest in the forest of Inglewood, on the ground of the old state maxim, that "Nullum tempus regi vel ecclesiæ occurrit”— that no lapse of time affects the rights of king or church. The lease was readily granted, but the circumstance instantly raised a fierce clamour amongst those who held similar property by similar insufficient titles, and Sir George Saville brought in a bill called the Nullum Tempus Bill, to resist the claims of the crown on any property over which for sixty years it had not exercised its rights. This would have been a fine boon to numbers of noblemen and gentlemen who were quietly holding such crown property by no valid title, and would have been a fatal measure for the crown. Ministers were obliged, for decency's sake, to resist it, and it was thrown out by one hundred and seventyfour votes to one hundred and thirteen; but the very next session it was quietly introduced again, and passed almost unanimously. It was a measure too inviting to the aristocracy, and certainly alienated at once vast tracts of land from the crown. This, in fact, was one of those many means by which our landed aristocracy have robbed the crown of its revenues, and thrown it for support on the nation at large. On the 11th of March, 1768, the parliament, having nearly lived its term of seven years, was dissolved, and the most unprecedented corruption, and bribery, and buying and selling the people's right to their own house, came into play. The system originated by Walpole was now grown gigantic, and the sale and purchase of rotten boroughs was carried on in the most unblushing manner by candidates for parliament, particularly aristocrats, who had managed to secure the old boroughs as their property, or to control them by their property. The mayor and aldermen of Oxford wrote to their members, long before the dissolution, to offer them the renewal of their seats for the sum of seven thousand five hundred pounds, which they meant to apply to the discharge of the debts of the corporation. The house arrested the mayor and aldermen, and clapped them in Newgate for five days; but on their humbly begging pardon at the bar of the house, they released them again to continue their base contract. Nay, whilst in prison, these corporation officials had sold their borough to the duke of Marlborough and the earl of Abingdon. Lord Chesterfield states in his letters to his son that he had offered four thousand five hundred pounds for a borough seat for him, but was laughed at; and was told that the rich East and West Indian proprietors were buying up little boroughs at the rate of from three thousand to nine thousand pounds. Thus new interests were coming in from the East and West Indies, by which men, seeking to protect their own corruptions in these countries, and to secure their unrighteous prey, swelled the great parliamentary sink of corruption, by which the people were turned out of their own house by the wealthy, and made to pay their greedy demands on the government; for that which these representatives of rotten boroughs bought they meant to sell, and at a plenteous profit. Well might Chatham say this rotten part of the constitution wanted amputating. Where the people of corporations had votes, they were corrupted beyond all hope of resistance by the lavish bribes of the wealthy. The earl Spencer spent seventy thousand pounds to secure the borough of Northampton for his nominee. There were attorneys acting then as now for such boroughs, and such corrupt constituents, who were riding about offering them to the highest bidders. One Hickey was notorious amongst this tribe of political pimps and panderers; and, above all, the borough of Shoreham distinguished itself by its venality, which assumed an aspect almost of blasphemy. The burgesses united in a club to share the proceeds of bribery equally amongst themselves, and styled themselves "the Christian Club," in imitation of the first Christians, who had all things in common ! didate for the representation of the city, than he was receivel by the crowd with the most vociferous acclamations. There were seven candidates at the poll. Wilkes received one thousand two hundred and forty-seven votes, but he was still lowest on the poll. His friends, the mob, had no franchise. Undaunted by his defeat, he immediately offered himself for Middlesex, and there, though the mob could not vote, they could act for him. They assembled in vast numbers, shouting, "Wilkes and Liberty!" They accompanied him to the poll; they stopped all the roads that led to the hustings at Brentford, suffering no one to pass who was not for Wilkes and liberty. His zealous supporters wore bluc cockades or paper in their hats, inscribed "Wilkes and Liberty," or "No. 45." At night they assembled in the streets, insisting on people illuminating their houses in honour of Wilkes; abused all Scotchmen they met; scribbled "No. 45" on the panels of carriages as they passed; made the parties in them shout their favourite cry; broke the windows of lord Bute at the west-end, and of Harley, the lord mayor, at the Mansion House-the same Harley, a younger brother of the earl of Oxford, who, as sheriff, had had to burn the " No. 45" of the " North Briton," in Cornhill. By such means the mob managed to return Wilkes at the very head of the poll. This was wormwood to the government; and Wilkes did not leave them many days in quiet. He had declared that, on returning to England, he would surrender himself under his outlawry on the first day of the next term. Ac In the train of all this unprincipled corruption followed riots and tumults amongst the people, who were at once starving from the scarcity and dearness of bread, and infuriated with drinking to serve the views of these base candidates. From the centre of this unholy chaos again rose the figure of John Wilkes, as the reputed champion of liberty. Wilkes, uneasy in Paris, his funds dried up, his debts increasing, turned a sharp eye on the proceedings in England. There he saw the great mind of Chatham sunk in eclipse; and in his absence the members of both parliament and cabinet divided into furious factions, think-cordingly, on the 20th of April, he presented himself to the ing not of the honour and interest of the country, but only of their own paltry power and enrichment. The people, left without representatives, without defenders, sunk in ignorance, and suffering from scarcity, were showing their discontent by public disturbances. Never was there so fine an opportunity for a bold demagogue. Was it any wonder that, thus cheated, and neglected, and uninstructed, the people should flock round the first impudent champion that offered to fight their battles? If men cannot have a stone bridge over a river, they will take up with a wooden one, or even a hollow tree, to carry them over. Wilkes was that hollow tree-a noisy and clever demagogue, an adventurer on his own account, caring little or nothing for real liberty or the people; but he was the only man who cried "Liberty!" and the people, without a leader or a friend, were sure to echo the cry. Wilkes came over to England on the 7th of February. He was advised to try Westminster, where Mr. John Churchill, the brother of his coadjutor, the satirist, and others, were in his interest, but he boldly struck for the city of London. He took up his quarters with Mr. Hayley, in Great Alie Street, Goodman's Fields. There he wrote a most submissive and pleading letter to the king, stating his loyalty and his grievances, and praying for a full pardon, that he might enjoy the privileges of his country. No notice was taken of his letter; and though, when he first entered London, Horace Mann said he saw his hackney-chair followed only by a dozen women and children, yet, no sooner did he boldly appear in the streets of London, with the outlawry still in full force, yet declaring himself a can. court of king's bench, attended by his counsel, Mr. Glynn, and avowed himself ready to surrender to the laws. Lord Mansfield declared that he was not there by any legal process, and that the court could not take notice of him; but in a few days he was taken on a writ of capias ad legatum, and on the 8th of June he was again brought before lord Mansfield, who declared the outlawry void through a flaw in the indictment; but the original verdict against him was confirmed, and he was sentenced to two years' imprisonment, and two fines of five hundred pounds each-one for the "North Briton," and the other for the "Essay on Woman." But these proceedings had not been effected without continual tumults. On the day that Wilkes was arrested by order of the king's bench, on the 27th of April, and, being refused bail, was sent to the king's bench prison, the mob stopped the hackney coach as it proceeded over Westminster Bridge, took out the horses, and, with shouts of " Wilkes and Liberty!" drew him, not to the prison, but into the city, and took him into a tavern in Cornhill, where they kept him till midnight, declaring that he should enjoy his freedom in spite of the law. But Wilkes knew his position better than his champions, and, stealing away, he went voluntarily to the king's bench, and surrendered himself. The next morning, when the mob knew that he was in prison, they assembled in furious throngs, and demanded, under the most terrible menaces, his liberation. This being taken no notice of, they began to tear down the railings, and to light a bonfire, as if they would burn in the door, as the Porteus mob did at Edinburgh. They were at length dispersed by a detachment of horse guards, but not until the |