messenger to apprehend this sturdy citizen, and bring him before the house; but, instead of succeeding, the parliamentary messenger was taken by a city constable, and carried before Brass Crossby, the lord mayor. With the lord mayor sate alderman Wilkes and alderman Oliver. It was delightful work to Wilkes thus to set at defiance the house of commous, which had made such fierce war on him. The lord mayor, accordingly, was fully confirmed in his view-that the messenger of the commons had committed a flagrant violation of the city charter, in endeavouring to lay hands on one of its liverymen within its own precincts, and they held the messenger accordingly to bail. The house of commons was fired with indignation at this contemptuous disregard of their dignity. They passed a resolution, by a large majority, ordering the lord mayor and the two alderman to appear at their bar. Wilkes bluntly refused to attend the house in any shape but as a recognised member of it. Crossby pleaded, in Chatham's style, a severe fit of the gout; and Oliver, though he appeared in his place, refused to make any submission whatever, but told them he defied them. The house, in its blind anger, resolved that Oliver should be committed to the Tower, and Crossby to the custody of the serjeant-at-arms. But Crossby declared that he would not accept this indulgence at the hands of the house, but would share the incarceration of his honourable friend; and he was accordingly sent also to the Tower. As for Wilkes, the king declared that he would have nothing more to do with that devil, and he was let alone. The consequence of this stretch of tyranny-for the commons has shown on many occasions that it has been only restrained by the popular spirit out of doors from the commission of acts as despotic as any of those of the crownwas a vehement outburst of indignation in the opposition, Chatham urging them on, and Burke, and Barré, and others, making the intensest protests against the proceeding. The people out of doors were in the highest state of fury. They greeted the city members on their way to and from the house, but they hooted and pelted the ministerial supporters. Charles James Fox, still a government man, as all his house had been, was very roughly handled; lord North's carriage was dashed in, and himself wounded; and had he not been rescued by a popular member, Sir William Meredith, he would probably have lost his life. It was thought that he would resign; but, strong in his mistaken sense of duty, North, with tears in his eyes, that evening declared that he | was determined to maintain the cause of his country and king. That if he followed his own inclination, he should already have resigned a hundred times; but nothing but his majesty's wishes should compel him to such a step. So completely were these infatuated ministers incapable of sceing that the whole course of the policy, since the coming of George III. to the throne, was one long attempt to destroy the constitution and an attempt scarcely less infamous, or less persevering, than those which had ruined the Stuarts. council at Guildhall to the imprisoned lord mayor, also to Wilkes and Oliver, for their manful resistance to the tyranny of the commons. It was ordered that all the expenses of the lord mayor and Oliver should be defrayed by the corporation. The opposition members of both lords and commons visited the captives in the Tower; amongst them the dukes of Manchester and Portland, the earls Fitzwilliam and Tankerville, lord King, admiral Keppel, Sir Charles Saunders, Burke, Dowdeswell, and many others. The populace outside, at the same time, amused themselves by cutting off the heads of the effigies of North, Bute-against whom and the princess dowager their resentment still burned-and other ministers and their supporters. On the 5th of March writs of habeas corpus were issued at the cost of the city, and the lord mayor and Oliver were brought to the chamber of the lord chief-justice, De Grey, attended by a host of their friends, and defended by serjeant Glynn and Mr. Lee. De Grey said that he could neither bail nor discharge them; whereupon they were carried before lord Mansfield, who pronounced it a new case, and that he could not discharge them during the sitting of parliament. Meantime, a committee of the commons had been sitting to consider what should be done regarding these circumstances; and they came to the conclusion that Millar, the printer, should still be taken into custody by the serjeant-atarms. The opposition burst into wild laughter at the absurd conclusion, for their serjeant-at-arms had already attempted it in vain; his messengers, Carpenter and William, in defiance of the house, had two bills presented against them at the quarter sessions at Guildhall. The commons had engaged in a strife with the city, in which they were signally beaten, and no further notice being taken of the printers, from this time forward the practice of reporting the debates of parliament became recognised as an established privilege of the people, though formally at the option of the house; and so far now from members or ministers fearing any evil from it, the most conservative of them would be deeply mortified by the omission of their speeches in the reports. In the course of a speech on the existing condition of things, on the 1st of May, lord Chatham took a sweeping review of the conduct of ministers for some time past, and moved an address to the king, praying him to dissolve parliament and call a new one. He referred to the time when we were victorious abroad and tranquil at home, and then exclaimed, "But now how is the prospect darkened? How are the mighty fallen? On public days the royal ears are saluted with hisses and groans; and he sees libels against his person and government written with impunity; juries solemnly acquitting the publishers. What greater mortification can befall a monarch? Yet this sacrifice he makes to his ministers; to their false steps he owes his disgrace." He ran over the treaty of Fontainbleau; the affair of the Falkland Islands; the proceedings against Wilkes; the "Massacre of St. George's Fields;" the The city defended the cause of their officers strenuously. iniquity of ministers in refusing to inquire into these The three other members of the house of commons, Treco-attacks on the rights and the lives of the people; and the thick, Sawbridge, and Townshend, made common cause consequent unpopularity of parliament, which, to avoid the with their imprisoned colleagues. Thanks were voted in full searching observation of the public, endeavoured to shut up A.D. 1771.] CHANGES IN THE ADMINISTRATION. the proceedings of the legislature from view; the prosecution of the printers and reporters, and of the dignitaries of the city for standing by the rights of the subjects; and their imprisonment of the chief magistrate because he would not violate his oath. The review certainly presented a most melancholy and long persistence in a course of most imbecile and arbitrary government, which, combined with the alienation of the loyalty of the American colonies, was enough to excite the alarm of any people. He declared that the government had become odious and contemptible, the commons more than suspected of a design to destroy the bulwark of the constitution, and that these things had convinced him that it was absolutely necessary to repeal the septennial act, and had converted him into an advocate of triennial parliaments. This speech produced a vast sensation in the country. It was vigorously echoed by the pen of Junius, who added, that he had long been convinced that it was the only possible resource left us for the preservation of the constitution. Out of the unwise and unpopular administration of the early part of George III.'s reign, thus loomed the great question of reform of parliament, which has continued to advance in strength and importance to the present hour. On the 8th of May the session came to an end. The poor king, who saw in the ominous proceedings, which Chatham had enumerated, nothing but the groundless discontent of the people, and no want of sense or liberality in his ministers, congratulated parliament on the blessings of peace, and bade them, by avoiding animosities amongst themselves, to perpetuate this happy state of things. The termination of the session also opened the doors of the Tower, and liberated the lord mayor and alderman Oliver. They were attended from the Tower to the Mansion House by the corporation in their robes, where a banquet celebrated their restoration to freedom, and the populace displayed their sympathy by bonfires and illuminations. During the recess considerable changes took place in the cabinet. Lord Halifax died on the 8th of June, and the earl of Suffolk succeeded him as secretary of state. Suffolk introduced his friend, lord Hyde, afterwards earl of Clarendon, to the post of chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, with an augmented salary. The administration of lord North was considerably strengthened, too, by the abilities of Thurlow, as attorney-general, and of Wedderburn, as solicitor-general. Thurlow was famous for his knowledge of Greek and Latin, but still more famous for cursing, swearing, and ill temper. His morals were not more refined than his tongue, though he was the son of a clergyman, and his principles were high church. His intellect was vigorous and acute, and no man could discharge the duties of a judge with more credit, when his political prejudices did not come in the way. Office was his great ambition; but the indulgence of his surly temper his great failing. Under his rude and crabbed exterior, he nevertheless concealed some virtues and some generosity. His head and countenance are said to have resembled in massy majesty the busts of the Olympian Jupiter, and Fox said no man was ever yet so wise as Thurlow looked. It mast not be forgotten, either, amid his many interested promotions, when he became lord chancellor, that he was 87 the friend of the admirable but unfortunate poet Cowper, and the patron of bishop Horsley. Wedderburn, who was the son of a small landowner in Scotland, was an eloquent pleader, both in court and parliament, with all the ambition of Thurlow without his grasp of mind. He was rather specious than deep or comprehensive, but, with the sagacity of his country, he kept his own interest steadily in view, and did not hesitate to sacrifice his party to his hope of rising on any occasion. Ile set up as a violent oppositionist with Burke, Chathamn, Barré, and the rest; but he suddenly quitted them for the solicitor-generalship under lord North, giving, according to lord Campbell, the most flagrant example of ratting upon record, nor did he stop till he reached the woolsack and the title of lord Loughborough, and finally of earl of Rosslyn. But the addition to the cabinet of lord North which occasioned the greatest surprise, was that of the duke of Grafton. He received the privy seal. The duke of Grafton had grown more dissolute and more indolent as he advanced in life. That patriotism which appeared to animate him under the noble guidance of Chatham, seemed now to have died out. He was a confirmed gambler and libertine, and was open to the perpetration of mean and paltry jobs. His conduct had brought down upon him some of the most flaying sarcasms and terrible diatribes of Junius, who did not hesitate now to couple his return to office with the coming back of Bute to England. That Bute returned with a mind still busy with schemes of influencing English affairs, is clear from his employing Capability Brown, as he was styled, the cclebrated landscape gardener, to sound Chatham as to a coalition. Brown was employed by Chatham's friend, Calcraft, on his grounds at Leeds Abbey, in Kent, and he seized the opportunity to propound through Calcraft the overtures of Bute to Chatham. Nothing came of it, an nothing but what was derogatory to Chatham, who had sɔ unsparingly denounced Bute as the curse of his country, could have come of it. Probably Chatham treated the proposal with due contempt. But, if we are to believe Junius, Grafton's return to office, and Bute's return to England, had more connection. "Your grace's appointment to a seat in the cabinet," he says, was announced to the public by the return of lord Bute to this country. When that noxious planet approaches England, he never fails to bring plague and pestilence along with him." Junius sketches the leading ministers of this cabinet with a free hand. He intimates that it needed nothing but Grafton's accession to complete it. "In vain would the sovereign have looked round him for another character so consummate as yours. Lord Mansfield shrinks from his principles; his ideas of government, perhaps, go further than your own, but his heart disgraces the theory of his understanding. Charles Fox is yet in blossom; and as for Mr. Wedderburn, there is something about him which even treachery cannot trust. For the present, therefore, the best of princes must have contented himself with lord Sandwich. There is something singularly benevolent in the character of our sovereign. From the moment that he ascended the throne there is no crime of which human nature is capable, and I call upon the recorder to witness it. date, which was clearly false, for Oliver was not a ministerial candidate. He accused him of the solitary, vindictive malice of a monk, and taunted him with the failure of his candidate as the evidence of his own estimation with the that has not appeared venial in his sight. With any other prince, your shameful desertion of him in the midst of that distress which you alone had created, in the very crisis of danger, when he fancied he saw the throne already surrounded by men of virtues and abilities, would have out-people. This brought out Horne with his vigorous and weighed the memory of your former services." Such an administration boded ittle change for the better in the policy of the court, and the appointments now made for the prince of Wales's education. Lord Holderness was appointed governor; lord Mansfield's friend, doctor Markham, bishop of Chester, and, five years after, archbishop of York, preceptor; and doctor Cyril Jackson, sub-preceptor-the last by far the best appointment, for he was a fine scholar. During the recess a violent quarrel had been going on in the city. John Wilkes, who invariably sank to insignificance when not stirring the muddy waters of political agitation, was equally stimulated to action by his necessities and his ambition. Though the Society of the Bill of Rights had raised no less than seventeen thousand pounds to discharge Wilkes's debts, this by no means sufficed for him. He had spent that and wanted more. Disputes arose in the society betwixt those who supported the incessant claims of Wilkes, and those who had grown disgusted with them and him. The society went to pieces; and amongst those who had been the warmest of Wilkes's friends, the Rev. John Horne became one of his most determined enemies. Horne, who was a thorough-going demagogue, as that term was then understood, namely, a determined friend of the people, without being an enemy to constitutional monarchy, seems to have had sufficient cause for his distrust of Wilkes. He had been too long and intimately acquainted with that patriot not to know all his meanness. Wilkes was now offering himself as sheriff; but alderman Oliver, who had lately been in prison for his bold conduct in the affair of Miller, the printer, had refused to support the claim of Wilkes. In fact, not only he, but the lord mayor, alderman Townshend, and Sawbridge, were beginning to see through Wilkes. Oliver went further-he refused to serve as the other sheriff with Wilkes. Government availed itself of these divisions to defeat the election of Wilkes. Alderman Bull became the second candidate with Wilkes, and government induced their party in the city to nominate aldermen Plumbe and Kirkman in opposition to them. Wilkes would probably have been defeated, especially as Oliver finally came forward, supported by all the eloquence and exertions of of John Horne. But, fortunately for Wilkes and his fellow-candidate, Bull, a letter, sent by the government agent to a Mr. Smith in the city was misdelivered to another Mr. Smith, a supporter of Wilkes and Bull, announcing the exertions that government would make in support of their men, Plumbe and Kirkman. This letter was immediately published, and, alarming all the enemies of government, made them rally round Wilkes and Bull, who were accordingly elected. Oliver, who was a man of integrity, and had well deserved of the city, was left lowest on the poll, because he had slighted and then opposed Wilkes, and John Horne, for his share in the business, fell under the iron scourge of Junius, who, in one of his scarifying letters to the duke of Grafton, stigmatised Horne as a supporter of the ministerial candi sarcastic letter of July 13th, commencing, "Farce, Comedy, and Tragedy-Wilkes, Foote, and Junius, united at the same time against one poor parson." Horne showed that he had a pen equal in keenness and stinging satire, and superior in the statement of solid facts, to Junius-the only man who had measured lances successfully with him. He heaped unmeasured odium on Junius as a secret assassin, stabbing every man's character, and especially that of the king. And, in fact, the language which Junius applied to the monarch never, before or since, was applied with impunity by a subject to his sovereign. In his very reply to Horne, he says, "You cannot but know, nay, you dare not pretend to be ignorant, that the highest gratification of which the most detestable * * * in this nation is capable, would have been the defeat of Wilkes. I know that man much better than any of you. Nature intended him only for a good-humoured fool. A systematic education, with long practice, has made him a consummate hypocrite. Yet this man, to say nothing of his worthy ministers, you have assiduously laboured to gratify." But if Horne, afterwards Horne Tooke, convinced many that Junius had at length found his match, the more direct consequences of his exposure as a writer of history were his unmasking the meannesses and unprincipled conduct of the popular idol, Wilkes. He showed that he had been ready to be the servile tool of government, if they would have paid at his own extravagant rate for his services; that he had assiduously besieged the ministers for pay and pension, and had robbed every man whom he called a friend, when he got the opportunity. He showed that Wilkes had solicited a pension of one thousand pounds a-year in the Irish establishment; had accepted a clandestine pension for the Rockingham administration. He showed that the seventeen thousand pounds subscribed by the Society of the Bill of Rights, Wilkes had wasted in his private extravagance, instead of appropriating it to the discharge of his debts, as was intended. He revived the remembrance of his having run through his wife's fortune, and deserted her. That in his official position in the City, he had sold the posts in his appointment, amongst others, to his brother, his soliciter, &c. That whilst in the King's Bench, supported by his constituents, he had lived most extravagantly, drinking large quanties of claret; that he still retained six servants in his establishment, three of them French; that he had cheated his brother-in-law, Mr. Wildmer, out of a Welsh pony, and had pawned several rich suits of clothes which had been left in his charge at Paris. To counteract these damning charges, Wilkes was obliged to assume more public pretence of virtue than ever. He and his colleague, Bull, declared that, during their term of office, no military should attend the executions at Newgate, that being a most unconstitutional innovation. They threw open the doors and galleries of the Old Bailey during sessions gratis, and even denounced the use of French wines by the lord mayor at his banquets as unpatriotic, The feeble statesmen of these days did not perceive the tendency of events towards Russian and Prussian aggrandisement, and their destruction of the balance of power, for which we had spent so much life and money; they were helping on that catastrophe to the best of their abilities. They had been taken with a wonderful fancy for the friendship of Russia, and for security in the Baltic at her hands were ready to surrender security everywhere else. Russia was at war with Turkey-at war for the very purpose of seizing as much of her territory as possible; and we were ready to help her in the conquest of this very Crimea, which has been so fatal to our fellow-countrymen, and so costly to our treasury of late. On the 21st of January, 1772, the king opened parlia- mischievous design, which, in truth, was the dismemberment ment. Amongst the most important motions brought of Poland. forward, was one by alderman Sawbridge, on the 23rd of January, for shortening the duration of parliaments, which, of course, produced no result. On the 24th, sir William Meredith made another, of equal or greater importance, namely, that no bill, or clause of any bill, decreeing capital punishments, should pass the house without having first been submitted to a committee of the whole house. The statute book of the reign of the moral George III. was a perfectly Draconian one. The punishment of death was affixed to the most surprisingly trivial offences-the stealing of a sheep, or of a yard of calico, was death by the law. Sir William observed that, so common was the penalty of death, that scarcely a bill passed the house on the most commonplace matter that did not include menaces against human life. That a member, once hearing the word "death," asked what it meant, and was told that it was only part of a new inclosure bill! Catherine II. pursuing her war with the Turks, a scheme was laid before her paramour and great counsellor, Gregory Orloff, by one Papaz Ogli, from Larissa, formerly a companion in arms of his brother, Alexis Orloff, to excite an insurrection in Greece against Turkey. A fleet was fitted out, and put under the command of Alexis Orloff, to assist, by sea, the revolted Greeks on land. This fleet, which was, in reality, commanded by English officersElphinstone, Greig, Dugdale, and others—wintered in Port Mahon, and, in the spring of 1770, made for the Grecian coast. But the insurrection excited by Russia in Greece had failed. They had marched much too feeble an army thither to support it. The peasants of the neighbourhood of Mistra, the ancient Sparta, who were enrolled in two regiments, broke forth and committed great atrocities, avenging themselves of the long-endured barbarities of the Turks; but the Albanians marched down from their mountains in great numbers, overran the Peloponnesus, and cut down and massacred the Greeks in all their towns and villages. Patras and Tripolizza were especially the scenes of havoc and slaughter. In Tripolizza alone three thousand Greeks, The king's speech on the opening of the session was extremely pacific, and the addresses abounded with praises of the king's wisdom in saving us from a war on account of the Falkland Islands; but these peaceful expressions were soon followed by demands for an addition to our navy, on account of a Russian fleet having appeared in the Levant; of the French having again felt disposed to attempt the recovery of their East India possessions; and as a better safeguard of our West India Islands. This took the house by surprise. Admirals Saunders and Keppel, instead of encouraging the vote for twenty-five thousand men, including six thousand six hundred and sixty-four marines, both strongly opposed it. They declared that our last peace establishment was only nine thousand seven hundred and twenty men altogether, whilst we now demanded upwards of six thousand marines alone; that we were in a time of peace really asking for a war establishment. They declared that we had better be at war at once; and that the keeping of so many ill-of all ages and both sexes, were destroyed. The united conditioned ships in our ports was only to enable the first lords of the treasury to manage and corrupt maritime boroughs. Captain Phipps, afterwards lord Mulgrave, said that he knew that ten guard ships had been sinecures; and colonel Barré spoke in his usual unsparing style; exposed the inconsistency of our first introducing the Russian fleet into the Mediterranean, and then demanding fresh ships and sailors to prevent them doing mischief there. "We have done something," he said, " of very great moment. There is an event which has astonished the world! We have seen the frigates of Russia in the centre of the Archipelago. The assistance of England, the supplies of our dockyards, helped to carry them thither, and to effect their mighty purpose. Have you well weighed the nature of this good office? Have you considered it to the bottom?" Barré said that, in gaining the friendship of the Czarina, they had made mortal enemies of the Ottoman Porte. In fact, the English government had been doing the work of weakening the Turkish empire for the advantage of Russia, for which we, in our day, have paid the penalty of the Crimean war. Barré also more than hinted at the conduct of Russia and Prussia-asserting that they were brooding over some host of Russians, Mainotes, and Montenegrins, were incapable of resisting them. The Albanians glutted their lust of murder and plunder on the unhappy Greeks without restraint. Whole districts of the Peloponnessus were reduced to deserts and strewn with corpses. The inhabitants who had not fallen had fled into the mountains; such was the condition of horror to which Russia had reduced Greece by her lawless ambition. Her fleet, now conducted by our countrymen, kindly endeavouring to promote this ambition, which was to become their own scourge, on the 5th of July, 1770, came to action with that of the Turks off Scio. In the action, the ships of the two admirals, Capudan Pacha, and Spiritow, the Russian, blew up. The English admirals, Elphinstone and Greig, continued the fight. The Turks fled into the Bay of Tschemé, when Elphinstone blockaded it; and captains Dugdale and Mackenzie, in the darkness of the night, sailed up to the Turkish fleet with fire-ships, which spread their flames in spite of all attempts to extinguish them, and reduced the whole fleet to ashes. The spectacle was terrible; the successive explosions of their powder magazines were heard in Athens. The earth at Smyrna shook as with an earthquake. The Russian ships were tence of acknowledging its independence. This was the last event of any importance in the war which was terminated in 1774, by the peace of Cainardgi, when the Crimea was pronounced an independent state. tossed and dashed against each other as by a storm. The Turkish sailors escaped many of them by swimming to land, and by boats, and, in their rage, murdered all the Greeks they could meet with, and set their towns and villages on fire. Smyrna and Constantinople itself were in a fearful Such were the lawless aggressions and sanguinary deeds panic. Elphinstone had promised the czarina to break of the Russian demi-savages, which the English governthrough the Dardanelles and attack the Turkish capital; ment, stoneblind to the future, had been aiding to the best but Alexis Orloff, who had shown the utmost imbecility in of their ability; and now they saw enough of their mistake the war both on land and on sea, dared not attempt it. The in bringing the Muscovites into the Mediterranean to make English insisted, and led the way to the mouth of the Dar- it necessary to increase their own fleet. The mischief, howdanelles, but the cowardly Russian would not follow, and the ever, was not to end here. Europe expected to see Turkey English officers quitted the fleet in disgust, and without at this time absorbed into Russia; but the jealousy of receiving any reward for their signal services. When they Austria and Prussia saved it; but they, at the same time, were gone, Orloff ordered four pictures to be painted of the turned the greedy eye of the czarina on another preydifferent phases of the destruction of the Turkish fleet, by Poland, and the three powers becoming joint robbers of Hackert, and then returned to St. Petersburg, where he was received with the highest honours, and named by the empress thenceforward, Orloff Tschemék off. In order to divide and reduce Turkey, the Russians made an alliance with Ali Bey, the viceroy of Egypt, and engaged, in return for his refusal of all assistance to the Porte, t> aid him in his designs on Syria. They besieged, in conjunction with him, Jaffa an 1 Damietta, but with little effect. They then invested Lemnos, but were driven thence by the bold enterprise of Gazi Hassan, who was born in Persia, and sold as a slave to a Turk in Rodosto. For his successful assault on the Russians, and their utter route, he was made lord high admiral. From that time the Russians could effect little against the Turks, except that they, in 1771, had managed to rend the Crimea from Turkey under pre nations, soon after consummated their crime of the first partition of that country. The domestic business of the session commencing with this year, was chiefly of an ecclesiastical character. Sir William Meredith presented a petition from two hundred and fifty of the established clergy, including many professors of civil law and physic, who prayed relief from subscription to the thirty-nine articles of the church of England, without which no degree could be obtained at either of our great universities, and no student even could be admitted at Oxford. The subject had been warmly discussed in the newspapers and pamphlets, and in public meetings. Sir William contended that enforcement of these articles only propagated perjury; and the petition itself stood upon the right of all Englishmen to enjoy the benefits of these insti |