Farmer George Volume I Part 16

This attack on ministers was not more violent than others that had appeared in earlier issues of the same paper, but the adherents of Bute, whom Wilkes had taken an active part in ousting from the Ministry, now saw an opportunity to avenge their fallen leader. The severe criticism of his speech made the King furious, and on the principle of "_L'etat, c'est moi_," he disregarded the distinction that Wilkes had so carefully drawn between the utterances of the monarch and the utterances of ministers in the monarch's name, and encouraged, if, indeed, he did not instigate, a prosecution. The Secretary of State, Lord Halifax, issued a general warrant, that is, a warrant which specified neither the name nor names nor described the person nor persons of the offender or offenders, but only gave instructions "to make a strict and diligent search for the authors, printers and publishers of a seditious and treasonable paper ent.i.tled 'The North Briton,' No. xlv, Sat.u.r.day, April 23, 1763, printed for G. Kearsley, in Ludgate Street, London, and them, or any of them, having found, to apprehend and seize, together with their papers, etc."

The printer and publisher were at once arrested, and, when brought before Halifax and Egremont, gave the names of the authors as John Wilkes and Charles Churchill. The warrant was shown to Wilkes at his house in Great George Street on the night of April 29, but he declined then to comply with it, stating his objection to a general warrant as such, pointing out that his name was not mentioned, that he was a Member of Parliament, and concluded by threatening the first who should offer violence to him in his own house at that hour of the night; but when the officers returned in the morning he offered no further opposition. Just after he was arrested and before he had been removed from his house, Churchill walked into the room, where were Wilkes and his captors.

Wilkes knew the messengers wanted also to arrest Churchill, and observing they did not know the poet by sight, before the latter could speak, with great presence of mind, said, "Good morning, Mr. Thomson.

How is Mrs. Thomson to-day? _Does she dine in the country?_" Churchhill took the hint, said Mrs. Thomson was waiting for him, left the room, and fled from the metropolis.

Wilkes's papers were seized, and he was taken before the Secretaries of State, and by them, after he had a.s.serted his privileges as a Member of Parliament and had refused to answer any questions, was committed a prisoner to the Tower. Such were the preliminaries of the great battle that made Wilkes a great and popular figure in the struggle for the liberty of the subject and the liberty of the press in England.

Wilkes's friends moved at once for a writ of _habeas corpus_, and after some delay, on May 6, the prisoner was produced before Chief-Justice Pratt[251] in the Court of King's Bench, when counsel applied for his discharge on the ground that the commitment was not valid. The Judge gave his decision in favour of Wilkes, declaring that general warrants were illegal, and that, anyhow, the charge against the accused was not sufficient to destroy his privileges as a Member of Parliament.

[251] Sir Charles Pratt, afterwards first Earl Camden, 1714-1794.

Wilkes was no sooner at liberty than he showed he was not a man who could be maltreated with impunity. He republished the numbers of "The North Briton" in a volume with notes, rea.s.serting that the King's Speech could only be regarded as a ministerial p.r.o.nouncement. He addressed to Lord Halifax and Lord Egremont an open letter, of which many thousand copies were distributed throughout the country, complaining that his home had been robbed, and that he was informed that "the stolen goods are in possession of one or both of your Lordships." His papers were not returned, and he brought an action against Robert Wood, the Under-Secretary of State, against whom he received a verdict giving 1,000 damages, and another action against Lord Halifax for unlawful seizure, from whom also, after many years' delay, he recovered heavy damages. In the meantime Lord Egremont had written to Lord Temple that the King desired the latter, as Lord-Lieutenant of the county, to inform Wilkes that he was dismissed from the Colonelcy of the Buckinghamshire Militia, which task Temple duly discharged, saying, "I cannot, at the same time, help expressing the concern I feel in the loss of an officer, by his deportment in command, endeared to the whole corps." As a punishment for this expression of sympathy, the King removed Lord Temple from the Lord-Lieutenancy, and with his own hand struck his name out of the Council books.

"To honour virtue in the Lord of Stowe, The pow'r of courtiers can no further go; Forbid him Court, from Council blot his name, E'en these distinctions cannot rase his fame.

Friend to the liberties of England's state, 'Tis not to Courts he looks to make him great; He to his much lov'd country trusts his cause, And dares a.s.sert the honour of her laws."[252]

[252] _The New Foundling Hospital for Wit._

The ministers in this struggle had found a powerful ally in Hogarth, who, though he had been friendly with Wilkes and Churchill, had been high in Bute's favour, even before the accession of George III, and now saw an opportunity to repay his patron. The quarrel between the painter and the agitator had begun with Hogarth's political cartoon, "The Times," in which Wilkes was ignominiously portrayed; and Wilkes, who let no man attack him with impunity, had replied in "The North Briton" with a violent onslaught upon the caricaturist. When Wilkes appeared in the Court of King's Bench, Hogarth, it is said, from behind a screen made a sketch for a caricature of the accused, in which the latter's squint was most malignantly exaggerated. Wilkes took this in good part, and, indeed, in later days said jocularly that he found himself every day growing more and more like the unflattering portrait; but Churchill, who was devoted to his friend, replied in "An Epistle to William Hogarth,"

in which--after the model furnished by Pope in his immortal reprimand to Addison--while praising Hogarth's genius, he poured vitriolic scorn upon his vanity and other weaknesses, concluding with a tremendous indictment of the painter's supposed dotage.

"Sure, 'tis a curse which angry fates impose, To mortify man's arrogance, that those Who're fashioned of some better sort of clay, Much sooner than the common herd decay.

What bitter pangs must humbl'd Genius feel In their last hours to view a Swift and Steele!

How must ill-boding horrors fill her breast, When she beholds men mark'd above the rest For qualities most dear, plunged from that height, And sunk, deep sunk, in second-childhood's night!

Are men, indeed, such things? and are the best More subject to this evil than the rest?

To drivel out whole years of idiot breath, And set the monuments of living death?

Oh, galling circ.u.mstance to human pride!

Abasing thought, but not to be denied!

With curious art the brain, too finely wrought, Preys on herself, and is destroyed by thought.

Constant attention wears the active mind, Blots out her powers, and leaves a blank behind.

But let not youth, to insolence allied, In heat of blood, in full career of pride, Possess'd of genius, with unhallow'd rage Mock the infirmities of reverend age; The greatest genius to this fate may bow; Reynolds, in time, may be like Hogarth now."

Hogarth replied to the "Epistle" by a savage caricature of Churchill, ent.i.tled, "The Bruiser, C. Churchill (once the Reverend!) in the character of a Russian Hercules, regaling himself after having killed the monster _Caricatura_, that so sorely-galled his _virtuous_ friend, the Heaven-born Wilkes." The poet is portrayed as a bear, with torn clerical bands and ruffles, seated upon Ma.s.singer's "A New Way to Pay Old Debts," and "A List of the Subscribers to 'The North Briton,'" etc., one arm holding a quart pot, and the other round a ma.s.sive club, on which the knots are inscribed "Lye 1," "Lye 3," "Lye 5," "Lye 8,"

"Fallacy," etc.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _A caricature of C. Churchill by Wm. Hogarth_

THE BRUISER]

Ministers, having been defeated on a point of law, were now determined to ruin Wilkes,[253] and proceeded, so far as lay in their power, to d.a.m.n his reputation for all time, although, as will be seen, the method adopted did not have the desired effect.

[253] "The destruction of one man has been for many years the sole object of your government."--Junius, December 19, 1769.

That Wilkes was a man of high moral character, as some few of his eulogists have endeavoured to sustain, is a theory incapable of acceptance, though perhaps his lack of principle in early days has been more severely castigated than it deserved, considering that morality is, after all, comparative, and that a dragon of virtue in the days that were earlier would now be looked upon as a monster of iniquity. The son of a rich merchant, Wilkes was educated in England and at Leyden, and on his return to England at the age of two-and-twenty, had been persuaded by his father to espouse a wealthy woman ten years his senior. Not unnaturally the marriage was unhappy, and, indeed, Wilkes never even professed to regard it except as a convenience, but notwithstanding this circ.u.mstance his behaviour to his wife leaves the deepest stain on his character. He squandered her money in debauchery, and, after they had separated, endeavoured to deprive her of an annuity of 200 a year, all she had kept of her estates. He was initiated by Sir Francis Dashwood into the brotherhood of Medmenham Abbey, where he fraternised with Lord Sandwich,[254] Thomas Potter,[255] and other men of fashion, and with them proceeded to outrage all canons of decency.[256] In connexion with the brotherhood Potter and Wilkes in collaboration composed an obscene parody of Pope's "Essay on Man" called "An Essay on Woman," which, in imitation of the original poem, was furnished with notes under the name of Bishop Warburton; and to the burlesque was attached a blasphemous paraphrase of _Veni Creator_.

[254] John Montagu, fourth Earl of Sandwich (1718-1792).

[255] Thomas Potter (1718-1759), son of John Potter, Archbishop of Canterbury.

[256] It is said that demon worship and mock celebrations of the rites peculiar to monastic orders were the most reputable of the ceremonies.

Over the princ.i.p.al entrance to the Abbey Sir Francis Dashwood had placed the motto from Rabelais' Abbey of Theleme, "_Fay ce que voudras_."

"Dashwood shall pour from a Communion cup Libations to the G.o.ddess without eyes, And hob and n.o.b in cyder and excise."

Churchill: _The Candidate_.

Without setting up any defence of these compositions, it may in extenuation be said that the circulation was limited to twelve or thirteen copies, which were distributed among members of the club, that it was printed at Wilkes's house, and that the latter took the greatest care to prevent the workmen from carrying away any sheets. Disgraceful as the amus.e.m.e.nt was, at least it could be pleaded it had no evil effect upon the circle of vicious men who inspired it; but it gave the Government a handle against their uncompromising foe of which they were not slow to take advantage.

In spite of all precautions, one of the printers had stolen some sheets of the "Essay on Woman" and this fact, which came to the knowledge of John Kidgell, then chaplain to the Earl of March, was by him imparted to a minister, who incited the clergyman to publish a pamphlet giving an account of Potter and Wilkes's _jeu d'esprit_. This in itself was an unworthy proceeding, but a greater folly threw this into the shade, for, when it was decided to bring to the notice of Parliament the stolen copy of the "Essay," the person chosen to raise the matter in the House of Lords was Lord Sandwich, than whom, Mr. Justin McCarthy has rightly said, "no meaner, more malignant, or more repulsive figure darkens the record of the last century."[257] This was a bad blunder, for Sandwich, as a member of the Franciscan brotherhood at Medmenham, had received a copy of the production, had read it with amus.e.m.e.nt, and had expressed his approval; and, even apart from this, was notorious for profligacy even among his immoral a.s.sociates--rumour has it he was expelled for blasphemy from the Beefsteak Society, and Horace Walpole has stated that "very lately, at a club with Mr. Wilkes, held at the top of the play-house in Drury Lane, Lord Sandwich talked so profanely that he drove two harlequins out of the company."[258]

"Hear him but talk, and you would swear Obscenity itself were there, And that Profaneness had made choice, By way of trump, to use his voice; That, in all mean and low things great, He had been bred at Billingsgate; And that, ascending to the earth Before the season of his birth, Blasphemy, making way and room, Had mark'd him in his mother's womb."[259]

[257] _History of the Four Georges._

[258] Walpole: _Memoirs of George III_.

[259] Churchill: _The Duellist_.

At the moment, to make bad worse, it was known that Sandwich had some personal animus against Wilkes, arising out of a quarrel at an orgy at which Sandwich when very drunk had invoked the devil, and Wilkes had thereupon let loose a monkey and nearly scared his fellow reprobate out of his wits. What the public thought of the part Sandwich took in this affair was not long afterwards made manifest at a performance at Covent Garden Theatre of "The Beggar's Opera," when, in the third act, Macheath exclaims, "That Jemmy Twitcher should peach me I own surprised me. 'Tis a proof that the world is all alike, and that even our gang can no more trust each other than other people," there were cries from all parts of the house of "Jemmy Twitcher! Jemmy Twitcher!" and for the rest of his life by that sobriquet was Sandwich known, even, as Horace Walpole says, to the disuse of his own name.

"Extremes in nature prove the same, The profligate is dead to shame, No conscious pangs ensue; Satire can't wound the virtuous heart, Nor _Savile_ fell her venom'd dart, No more, my lord, than you.

"To peach the accomplice of one's crimes, A gracious pardon gains sometimes, When treachery recommends; For you, my lord, is clearly seen, For close the sacred tie between King's evidence and friends."[260]

[260] _Lines addressed to the Earl of Sandwich._

Parliament met on November 15, 1763; and Lord Sandwich, before the Address was taken into consideration, placed on the table the "Essay on Woman," and denounced it as a "most blasphemous, obscene, and abominable libel," in a speech which drew from Lord le Despencer the remark that never before had he heard the devil preach. Bishop Warburton's language on this occasion was, perhaps, such as no divine has ever before or since employed in public--"the blackest fiends in h.e.l.l would not keep company with Wilkes," he declared, and then apologised to Satan for comparing them. This intemperance of attack coupled with the underhand methods employed by the Ministry, brought forth a remonstrance from Pitt; while later Churchill avenged Wilkes by some lines of terrible ferocity on the Bishop:

"He drank with drunkards, lived with sinners, Herded with infidels for dinners; With such an emphasis and grace Blasphemed, that Potter kept not pace: He, in the highest reign of noon, Bawled bawdy songs to a Psalm tune; Lived with men infamous and vile, Truck'd his salvation for a smile; To catch their humour caught their plan, And laughed at G.o.d to laugh with man; Praised them, when living, in each breath, And d.a.m.n'd their memories after death."[261]

[261] _The Duellist._

The House of Lords voted the "Essay" a breach of privilege, a "scandalous, obscene and impious libel," and presented an address to the King demanding the prosecution of the author for blasphemy; while at the same time the House of Commons declared No. xlv of "The North Briton" to be a "false, scandalous, and seditious libel," and ordered the paper to be burnt by the common hangman. In the debate in the lower house, Samuel Martin, an ex-Secretary of the Treasury, who had been denounced in "The North Briton" as a "low fellow and a dirty tool of power," took the opportunity to denounce Wilkes as a cowardly, scandalous, and malignant scoundrel, and immediately afterwards challenged him to a duel, in which the latter was severely wounded. Wilkes, although the challenged person, had generously allowed his a.s.sailant the choice of weapons, and Martin selected pistols. Subsequently, however, it became known that, since the insult appeared in "The North Briton" eight months earlier, he had regularly practised shooting at a target, whereupon Churchill took the not unnatural view that Martin was, to all intents and purposes, a would-be a.s.sa.s.sin.

"But should some villain, in support And zeal for a despairing Court, Placing in craft his confidence, And making honour a pretence To do a deed of deepest shame, Whilst filthy lucre is his aim; Should such a wretch, with sword or knife, Contrive to practise 'gainst the life Of one who, honour'd through the land, For Freedom made a glorious stand; Whose chief, perhaps his only crime, Is (if plain Truth at such a Time May dare her sentiments to tell) That he his country loves too well; May he--but words are all too weak The feelings of my heart to speak-- May he--oh, for a n.o.ble curse, Which might his very marrow pierce!-- The general contempt engage, And be the Martin of his age!"[262]

[262] _The Duellist._

Though Wilkes was confined to his house by his wound, ministers, in spite of his pet.i.tion that no further steps should be taken before his recovery, pressed forward their measures against him. During the Christmas recess Wilkes became convalescent and went to France, from whence, when Parliament rea.s.sembled, he sent a medical certificate stating he was unable to travel without endangering his health; but his enemies declared, and perhaps some of his friends secretly believed, that this was a subterfuge, and that in reality the reason for his continued absence was because he dared not face the trials for libel and blasphemy. On January 19, 1764, Wilkes was expelled from the House of Commons for having written a scandalous and seditious libel; and on February 21 the Court of King's Bench found him guilty of having reprinted "No. XLV" and of printing the "Essay on Woman," and, as he did not appear to receive sentence, outlawed him for contumacy.

Ministers now congratulated themselves upon having got rid of their dangerous opponent, but, as a matter of fact, they had only driven him away, which was a very different thing, for in his absence he, standing as the persecuted champion of liberty, was a very potent factor in affairs. Lord Temple paid the greater part of Wilkes's law expenses, and, subsequently, the Rockingham Whigs made the outlaw an allowance of 1,000 a year. Wilkes's popularity was, indeed, immense. When on December 3, "No. XLV" was to be burnt at the Royal Exchange, a great mob collected, and showed so threatening a spirit that Harley, one of the sheriffs, went to consult the Lord Mayor as to what steps should be taken to avert danger, and the hangman followed in his wake. The partly-burnt copy of "The North Briton" was rescued by the crowd, carried off in triumph, and displayed in the evening at Temple Bar, where a bonfire was made into the midst of which, amidst great cheering, a huge jack-boot was thrown. Chief Justice Pratt was rewarded for his impartial judgment with the freedom of the cities of London and Dublin; and all adherents of Wilkes became popular personages. Astute tradesmen disposed easily of inferior goods by marking them "45," and the turmoil created by this affair penetrated even the recesses of the Court, with the result that some years later the young Prince of Wales, when he had been punished, avenged himself by crying in his father's presence "Wilkes and No. XLV for ever!"

Kearsley, the publisher of "The North Briton" was discharged by the Court on his own recognizances; but in 1765 Williams, who had re-issued "No. XLV" was fined 100, ordered to stand in the pillory in Old Palace Yard for an hour on March 1, and to give security in the sum of 1,000 for his good behaviour for seven years. This was an opportunity that gave Wilkes's supporters a chance to display their feelings. Williams was taken in a triumphant procession in a hackney-coach numbered forty-five and brought back in the same way; while he stood in the pillory a collection was made, and 200 subscribed for him; and close by were erected four ladders, with cords running from each other, on which were displayed a jack-boot, an axe, and a Scotch bonnet, to testify to the prevalent belief that the moving spirit of the prosecution was Lord Bute.

"THE PILLORY TRIUMPHANT, or, NO. 45 FOR EVER.

"Ye sons of Wilkes and Liberty, Who hate despotic sway, The glorious forty-five now crowns This remarkable day.

And to New Palace Yard let us go, let us go.