rth's first
proposal.

RELEASE OF WILKES.

On the 12th of April, the term of Wilkes's imprisonment having expired,
he was set at liberty. He was no sooner freed from confinement than
he recommenced his system of agitation. Everywhere he harangued on
his sufferings, and declared that he was ready to die in the cause of
liberty. He was considered a martyr by the populace, and in both houses
he had his friends. On the 1st of May, the Earl of Chatham, after
arranging his plan of attack with Temple, Rockingham, Shelburn,
and others, stood up in the house of lords and presented a bill for
reversing the adjudications of the house of commons, whereby John
Wilkes, Esq. had been adjudged incapable of being elected a member to
serve in this present parliament, and the freeholders of the county of
Middlesex, had been deprived of one of their legal representatives. In
descanting on this, Chatham declared that a violent outrage had been
committed against everything dear and sacred to Englishmen. He then made
some observations on the new state arithmetic by which Colonel Luttrel's
296 votes had been held to be a greater number than Wilkes's 1143! This,
he said, was flying in the face of all law and freedom: a robbery of the
liberty of freeholders; and making the birthrights of Englishmen a mere
farce. He then represented Colonel Luttrell as sitting in the lap of
John Wilkes, and the majority of the house as being turned into a state
engine. He added, in conclusion, "I am afraid this measure originated
too near the throne. I am sorry for it; but I hope his majesty will soon
open his eyes, and see it in all its deformity." Lord Mansfield opposed
the Earl of Chatham. He contended that the house had no right to
interfere with the decisions of the commons; that those decisions were
legal; that in consequence of previous votes and sentences, Wilkes was
nobody in the eye of the law; and that, though the freeholders gave
their votes, it was for the house of commons to judge as to the point of
qualification. Lord Camden replied, that Lord Mansfield was delivering
unconstitutional doctrines, and that Wilkes had been expelled in
consequence of a secret influence which had said, "Mr. Wilkes shall not
sit." He also asserted that the judgment of the commons on the Middlesex
election was a worse wound in the constitution than any of those
inflicted in the reign of Charles I., when the nation had no parliament;
and he expressed a hope that if