esent Parliament"; and it issued a writ for a
fresh election. Middlesex answered this insolent claim to limit the free
choice of a constituency by again returning Wilkes; and the House was
driven by its anger to a fresh and more outrageous usurpation. It again
expelled the member for Middlesex; and on his return for the third time
by an immense majority it voted that the candidate whom he had defeated,
Colonel Luttrell, ought to have been returned, and was the legal
representative of Middlesex. The Commons had not only limited at their
own arbitrary discretion the free election of the constituency, but they
had transferred its rights to themselves by seating Luttrell as member
in defiance of the deliberate choice of Wilkes by the freeholders of
Middlesex. The country at once rose indignantly against this violation
of constitutional law. Wilkes was elected an Alderman of London; and the
Mayor, Aldermen, and Livery petitioned the king to dissolve the
Parliament. A remonstrance from London and Westminster mooted a far
larger question. It said boldly that "there is a time when it is clearly
demonstrable that men cease to be representatives. That time is now
arrived. The House of Commons do not represent the people." Meanwhile a
writer who styled himself Junius attacked the Government in letters,
which, rancorous and unscrupulous as was their tone, gave a new power to
the literature of the Press by their clearness and terseness of
statement, the finish of their style, and the terrible vigour of their
invective.

[Sidenote: Parliamentary Reform.]

The storm however beat idly on the obstinacy of the king. The printer of
the bold letters was prosecuted, and the petitions and remonstrances of
London were haughtily rejected. The issue of the struggle verified the
forebodings of Burke. If, as Middlesex declared, and as the strife
itself proved, the House of Commons had ceased to represent the English
people, it was inevitable that men should look forward to measures that
would make it representative. At the beginning of 1770 a cessation of
the disease which had long held him prostrate enabled Chatham to
reappear in the House of Lords. He at once denounced the usurpations of
the Commons, and brought in a bill to declare them illegal. But his
genius made him the first to see that remedies of this sort were
inadequate to meet evils which really sprang from the fact that the
House of Commons no longer represented the people of Englan