Horace Walpole thus describes the transactions represented in the foregoing:—
“The merchants of London, to the number of six or eight hundred, amongst whom were Dutch, Jews, and any officious tools that they could assemble, having signed one of those servile panegyrics [addresses], set out in a long procession of coaches, to carry it to St. James’s.”
The modus operandi by which the address was promoted is fancifully summed up in the plate of the Oxford Magazine, vol. ii., p. 134, “The Principal Merchants and Traders assembled at the Merchant Seamen’s Office, to sign ye Address.” This print represents a further stage in the progress of the transaction. The Public Advertiser, March 11, 1769, announces, “For these two Days past, numbers of the Merchants and principal Traders of London have attended at the Merchant Seamen’s Office, over the Royal Exchange, in order to sign an Address to his Majesty, etc.”
It is stated in the Oxford Magazine, “So eager were the ministers to procure a long list of subscribers that, it is credibly reported, some of the addresses of the then ‘City Merchants,’ were signed by cobblers, porters, chairmen, livery-servants, and the very meanest of the rabble; for as the number of hands was the chief point of view, they cared but little of what rank or condition they were.” The caricaturist has carried out this view of the signatories. The chairman or president is a butcher, whose tray, containing a shoulder of mutton, is laid down at his feet; he is filled with loyal frenzy, and, with his butcher’s knife grasped ready for action, is exclaiming, “I shall stick my knife in Magna Charta, and cut up the carcase of the Bill of Rights.” A porter, with his knot, is anathematizing Wilkes’s “swivel eyes,” and wishing he “may sink under his load.” The petition is being signed by a barber, with his bowl under his arm, together with an aldermanic wig just ordered: “Ah, I’ve got an order for a new wig, only for signing my name.” A Scotch pedlar, with pack and staff, one of Lord Bute’s followers, declares, “Sawney mun sign too, gin it be to the De’il, for my guid laird’s sake.” A journeyman baker, with a basketful of loaves on his back, is coming in succession, well paid for his assistance: “Brother Merchants, follow my example, and you’ll never want bread;” and even a sooty chimney-sweep has expectations of ministerial patronage, “Who knows but I may be appointed to a Chimney at Court?” Prominent among those at the table whereon is the much-denounced “Address,” is a Jew money-jobber, who is elated at his prospects of a Treasury “job,” “Oh! for a large portion of scrip!” and the Dutch stockbroker, Van Scrip, is exclaiming, “Ah! de gross Scrip for Mynheer too,”—the subscription scrip to government loans, profitable to those who secured preference allotments, and, as described, alleged to be manipulated by the ministry in the nature of bribery.
The strictures provoked upon the underhand methods by which these addresses were forced upon the public are exemplified in an “Epistle to the North Briton,” which appeared in the Oxford Magazine, to accompany the engraving of the “Addressing Merchants.” The epistle is lengthy, and we have only room for the opening passages. It is possibly written by the “Brentford Parson;” indeed, the manner as well as matter indicates the authorship suggested. The motto is given, “There is nothing new under the sun” (Eccles. i. 9)—
“And so, sir, what you have often foretold is at last come to pass. We are fairly fallen back into the very dregs of the Stuart reigns. The party of Abhorrers is once more revived; of those Abhorrers, who, in the reign of King Charles the Second, expressed their detestation of all the patriotic and public spirited, as I would say—but, as they were pleased to call them, the factious and insolent petitions that were presented to the king for assembling a parliament, and for securing the other rights and liberties of the People.
“That such wretches should have existed at a time when the Sovereign claimed, and many of his subjects were willing to allow him, a divine, indefeasible, hereditary right to play the tyrant, and to destroy the constitution is nothing strange; but that any such should be found in the reign of a prince, whose family was advanced to the throne in direct contradiction to this absurd principle, would be really surprising, did we not know that human nature is always the same, and that though the seeds of slavery may be smothered for a time, yet whenever they meet with the vivifying influence of court sunshine, they immediately begin to quicken, and to spring up with vigour. And never, sure, did these seeds meet with a more fertile soil, or a more benign sky, than under the present arbitrary and despotic administration, when every man is sure to be rewarded in exact proportion to the servility of his character.
“In this respect, indeed, the present ministers have greatly the advantage of all that have gone before them; for I do not remember a single compliment paid to the Abhorrers, in the reign of King Charles the Second, except the honour of knighthood conferred upon Francis Withers, Esq., who procured and presented the Address from the City of Westminster. But how much more grateful and generous have been our present ministers! They have made the late chief City Magistrate a Privy Councillor, and have given him a contract with government for clothing soldiers, worth £1000 per annum. They have pardoned the murderers MacLaughlin, Balfe, and McQuirk, and have even granted them pensions. This, say the ministry, is only supporting their friends; but, if murderers be their friends, I believe few people will envy them the credit of such a connection.
“Some of the addresses in the reign of the Stuarts breathed a very free and independent spirit. That of the Quakers, upon the accession of King James the Second, may serve as an instance. It was conceived in the following terms:—
“‘We come,’ said they, ‘to testify our sorrow for the death of our good friend Charles, and our joy for thy being made our governor. We are told thou art not of the persuasion of the Church of England, no more than we; wherefore we hope thou wilt grant us the same liberty which thou allowest thyself. Which doing, we wish thee all manner of happiness.’
“There we see the Quakers, with their usual plainness and simplicity, very roundly tell his majesty, that he was not a member of the church of England; a circumstance, which was then thought by many, and hath since been declared by law, to be sufficient to disqualify him for wearing the crown of these Kingdoms.
“But how much more courtly and polite is the language of our present Addressers. They not only pay the highest compliments to the King, which he certainly deserves, they even offer the most nauseous and fulsome flattery to his ministers and servants, and express their entire approbation of every part of their conduct. They must therefore approve of the robbery committed upon the Duke of Portland, of the massacre in St. George’s Fields, of the riot and murders at Brentford, of withdrawing MacLaughlin from the cognizance of the laws, and of pardoning Balfe and McQuirk after they had been fairly tried and condemned by their country.
“But, not satisfied with declaring their approbation of the conduct of the ministry, they express their utter abhorrence and detestation of the conduct of those who have had the presumption to oppose them. They must, therefore, abhor the conduct of the Freeholders of Middlesex, who chose Mr. Wilkes and Mr. Serjeant Glynn, their representatives in parliament, in spite of all the violent, outrageous, and illegal attempts which the ministry made to prevent them. They must abhor the conduct of the 139 independent members who voted against the expulsion of Mr. Wilkes from an august assembly, of which they form the respectable, and perhaps even the most wealthy, tho’ not the most numerous part. They must abhor the conduct of the Citizens of London, of the Citizens of Westminster, of the Freeholders of Middlesex, and of all the other counties and corporations, who, in their instructions to their representatives, have disapproved of those very measures which the Addressers approve. In a word, they must abhor the conduct, at least the sentiments, of ninety-nine parts in a hundred of the people of England, who, if taken separately, and fairly interrogated, would be found to entertain opinions very different from those of the Addressers.”
The “Battle of Cornhill,” otherwise the fight for the signatures to the servile loyal address as already described, was followed by another stage in the contest, an attempt to carry the address in state through the city, the procession being stopped by a conflict in Fleet Street, of which turbulent episode a caricature appeared, March 22, 1769, under the title of the “Battle of Temple Bar.” The engraving offers a vista of Fleet Street; the Devil Tavern, the arched entrance to the Temple, and Nando’s Coffee-house are shown to the right; the gates of the bar are closed, and around is a scene of confused conflict. The decapitated heads of Fletcher and Townley, stuck on poles over Temple Bar, are represented in conversation. The Jacobites executed for their share in the Scottish raid of 1745 are inquiring whether the Addressers are not “friends to the cause which we all love so dear,” and which had planted their heads on the bar over twenty years before. A carriage, drawn by two horses, is the centre of the struggle; the coachman is observing “They all seem in a fair way;” the rabble are pelting the vehicle, from which the person charged with the care of the loyal address is making his escape. Another member of the party bound for St. James’s is seeking shelter from the shower of missiles at the entrance to Nando’s. Other coaches have been subjected to similar indignities; the servants are declaring, “Our masters are finely bedaubed!” The city marshal and his charger are under fire from the mob; grasping his baton and holding his hat to protect his face, the marshal declares, “I find I must go to ye Devil!” The Devil, perched on the sign of the famous tavern christened after his name, is crying, with a Scotch twang, “in compliment to my Lord Bute,” “Fly to me, my Bairns!” This plate is given in the London Magazine, with an account of the pelting and flight of those who were engaged in carrying the address to the king.
SEQUEL TO THE BATTLE OF TEMPLE BAR—PRESENTATION OF THE LOYAL ADDRESS AT ST. JAMES’S PALACE. 1769.
The concluding stage in the progress of the address and the cavalcade of carriages which attended it, was marked by the appearance of the satirical engraving entitled the “Sequel to the Battle of Temple Bar,” 1769, of which a reduced fac-simile is given. The spot represented is the front of St. James’s Palace, facing St. James’s Street. The remnants of the procession of merchants charged with the address in support of the ministry in power are escaping down Pall Mall, the carriages, with broken windows, being followed by galling volleys of stones and dirt on the part of the mob, while a hearse exhibiting inflammatory placards is accorded an enthusiastic reception. The spectators gathered at the St. James’s Coffee House and around the palace are encouraging the hostile demonstration; the courtiers are surveying the tumult from the gateway and windows of St. James’s Palace. A person mounted on the tower, and assumed to be intended for Lord Bute, is pointing to the weathercock, exclaiming, “High north wind,” i.e. a Scotch wind. The Guards are making attacks upon individuals; a gentleman is being surrounded; the violence of the soldiers is watched by a clergyman, evidently intended for Parson Horne, whose eye was upon those who infringed the rights of the subjects or unlawfully maltreated any of the people. A burlesque funeral procession diversified the proceedings, headed by a mounted mute, wearing a crape weeper, with mourning staff, the hearse drawn by two wretched screws, one black and one white; the coachman is equally odd—the person who drove was declared to have been a frolicsome lordling, it is said young Earl Mountmorres. The body of this vehicle displays a flaring placard—the presentment of an Irish chairman striking with a bludgeon a person who is knocked down and defenceless; this moving picture, inscribed “Brentford,” represents the fate of Mr. Clarke, whose fractured skull, caused by the brutal attack of Proctor’s hired ruffians, ended in his death. Similar placards, “St. George’s Fields” and “Scot Victory,” are posted on the hearse to remind the ministers that the odium of the massacre of the people at St. George’s Fields, and the deliberate assassination of William Allen (May 10, 1768), by a grenadier of the Scottish Regiment, were not forgotten; a coloured picture of this episode was displayed on the other side of the hearse. A diversion is attempted at the entrance to the palace gates, where the figure of a short nobleman is distinguishable by the star on his coat; he is using his broken official staff like a sword. This personage, who actually seized one of the rioters, and who is intended for Earl Talbot, lord steward of the household, is bareheaded, his wig having been displaced in the scuffle with the people, and, finally, a knock on the head cooled his courage; the Guards are coming to his support. Further details of the ending of this vexed question of the address are given in the political intelligence of the time. From all accounts, Mr. Boehm, in whose charge was the fateful roll, was too occupied in securing his own safety to trouble about the fate of the address. It appears that the scattered procession went on to St. James’s without the presenter of the document which had entailed so many embarrassments. According to the Political Register, a messenger was despatched back to the coffee-house for the address; where “Mr. Boehm, having missed it, remained in great suspense.” After many inquiries and great alarm, the roll was found under the seat of the coach, where, by a miracle, it had escaped the search of the mob; the address was immediately forwarded to St. James’s, where it was expectantly awaited.
The history of this incident is taken up by the Political Register for 1769:—
“The merchants and traders who retired with the address mentioned in the account of the proceedings at the ‘King’s Arms,’ having by means of repeated advertisements and private letters obtained a considerable number of persons to sign the said address at the Merchant Seamen’s Office over the Royal Exchange; ... Wednesday, the 22nd March, at two in the afternoon, being appointed, on that day at noon, a great number of the merchants, etc., of this city, set out from the Royal Exchange in their carriages, in order to present an address to His Majesty, attended by the City Marshal and constables; before they got to Cheapside, the mob showed them many marks of their resentment, by hissing, groaning, throwing dirt, etc., but when they arrived at Fleet Street, the multitude grew quite outrageous, broke the windows of the coaches, threw stones and glass bottles, and dispatched a party to shut up the gates at Temple Bar, on which the cavalcade was obliged to stop. Mr. Cook, the City Marshal, going to open the gates with his attendants, was very severely treated; his clothes were torn off his back and his head cut in two places. The populace then attacked the gentlemen in their carriages; Mr. Boehm (who carried the roll) and several of his friends being covered with dirt, were obliged to take refuge in Nando’s Coffee-house. Some of the coaches then drove up Chancery Lane, Fetter Lane, and Shoe Lane; but the greater part of the gentlemen, finding it impossible to proceed, returned home. The Addressers, however, did at length reach St. James’s, but the mob threw dirt at the gentlemen as they got out of their carriages at St. James’s Gate.”
The few that reached the palace were so covered with dirt as to be unpresentable, and those of the courtiers who came within reach of the mob were also bespattered. The document which was the main cause of this disturbance was within an ace of never reaching its destination.
“When Mr. Boehm was obliged to get out of his coach at Nando’s Coffee-house to avoid the mob, in his hurry he left the address under the cushion on one of the seats, and immediately ordered the coachman to go home; some of the mob opened the coach door, and began to search for the address, but the coachman declaring ‘it was sent before’ (though he knew not where it was), they were the less diligent in their search, and missed laying hold of it, by not feeling six inches farther on the seat.”
On the road thither, by the Strand, the additions already mentioned were made to the cavalcade, to the consternation of those who formed part of it:—
“When some of the coaches got to Exeter Exchange, a hearse came out of Exeter Street, and preceded them, drawn by a black and white horse, the driver of which had on a rough coat, resembling a skin, with a large cap, one side black, the other white, whose whole figure was very grotesque. On one side of the hearse was painted on canvas a representation of the rioters killing Mr. Clarke at the Brentford election; and on the other side was a representation of the soldiers firing on young Allen in the cow-house.”
The Town and Country Magazine (1769) divulges that the driver of the decorated hearse was “a man of fortune;” moreover, another account avers—
“I have always understood that the late Lord Mountmorres, then a very young man, was the person, who on that occasion, personated the executioner [of Charles I. ?], holding an axe in his hands, and his face covered with crape.” (See Wraxall’s “Historical Memoirs;” also the “Letters of the First Earl of Malmesbury,” etc.)
The hearse attended the cavalcade, making a short stop at Carlton House, where the Princess of Wales lived, also at the residence of the “Cumberland Butcher,” and at Lord Weymouth’s, in Pall Mall (as the author of the St. George’s Fields massacre); thence the hearse, with its “humiliating insignia, was driven into the court-yard of St. James’s, followed by the mob, after which it went off to Albemarle Street.” A copy of the address is given in the Political Register (iv. 1769).
The address and its supporters were in a sad plight when the levee-room was reached, after the foregoing vicissitudes. The Duke of Chandos wrote Mr. Grenville—
“Out of one hundred and thirty merchants who went up with the address, only twelve could get to the King, and they were covered in dirt, as indeed was almost the whole Court.”
The riotous crowd continued to create a disturbance at the palace gates, “accompanied with threats of a most dangerous kind” (as declared in the royal proclamation); while the Earl of Malmesbury wrote, “Many of the mob cried, ‘Wilkes and no King,’ which is shocking to think of.” At last, the proclamation against tumultuous assemblies was read, and—
“Several persons taken into custody by the soldiers; and two were taken by Lord Talbot, who was the only minister who had sufficient resolution to come down among the mob; his lordship had secured another, who was rescued, and his lordship received a violent blow on the head, by being thrown against a coach, and then thought it prudent to take shelter among the soldiers.”
A grand council at St. James’s was held on the afternoon of these events, and in the evening a Gazette Extraordinary was published, with a proclamation by the king—who had in person witnessed the disturbances attending the sham address,—“for suppressing riots,” etc., beginning—
“Whereas it has been represented to us that divers dissolute and disorderly persons have most riotously and unlawfully assembled themselves together, to the disturbance of the public peace, and have, in a most daring and audacious manner, assaulted several merchants and others, coming to our palace at St. James’s, and have committed many acts of violence and outrage before the gates of our palace,” etc.
The proclamation further charges the lord mayor, and justices of the peace for the cities of London and Westminster, borough of Southwark, and counties of Middlesex and Surrey, to prevent and suppress all riots, tumults, and unlawful assemblies, etc.
Another engraving on the same topic—as described by Mr. Edward Hawkins, from whose collection, bequeathed to the British Museum, many of these early illustrations are selected—was entitled:—
The procession and hearse (the driver is exclaiming “Wilkes and Liberty”) are again shown at St. James’s Palace. The chief promoter, Charles Dingley, is made the principal butt of this satire, and, as the address began with him, it is appropriately so terminated. The hearse with the placards is succeeded by a coach bearing on the roof a windmill, an allusion to Dingley’s too famous saw-mills at Limehouse, which were dismantled by the sawyers out of work and other rioters. The coachman of this equipage is endeavouring to pacify the mob: “Wilkes and Liberty, Gentlemen; I had no hand in the d——d Address.” The chief offender, seen inside the coach, is also appealing to the incensed crowd: “For God’s sake, Gentlemen, spare me; I wish the Address had been in Hell before I meddled with it.” His bemired footman is declaring, “My livery’s like my master, d——d Dirty.” The next coach has on it a zany with cap and bells, seated “on the Massacre of Aboyna;” this figure of folly is exclaiming, “I give Mr. Dingle the lead;” the rider, one of the loan-contractors and bidders for ministerial favour, cries, “Ayez pitié de moi!” “Dingle’s Downfall, a new Song,” is chanted by a female ballad-singer. Dead cats and mud are thrown at the procession, which is followed by the groans and hisses of the spectators.
The foregoing events are further elucidated in “A Dialogue between the Two Heads on Temple Bar.” The narrator professes to have overheard the following conversation upon politics between the decapitated heads of the 1745 rebels stuck over Temple Bar:—
Petitions and remonstrances began to make ministers tremble lest finally the sympathies of the throne might be turned into the proper channel, and the king be led to espouse the cause of the people, who, to do them justice, remained loyal under both the critical emergencies described as occurring under Charles II. and George III., and which had more than a casual resemblance.
The remonstrances of the citizens were persistently laid before the king, although every obstacle was interposed in the way of their presentation by petty indignities imposed upon those bold enough to approach the presence with objects thus distasteful to the royal ideas of sovereign right—
On July 5, 1769, the Livery of London presented a petition to the king; the lord mayor, Samuel Turner, Sir Robert Ladbrooke,56 Alderman Beckford, and other friends of popular liberty being charged with this statement of grievances, of which the following extracts must suffice:—
“We should be wanting in our duty to your Majesty, as well as to ourselves and our posterity, should we forbear to represent to the throne the desperate attempts that have been, and are too successfully, made to destroy that constitution to the spirit of which we owe the relation which subsists between your Majesty and the subjects of these realms, and to subvert those sacred laws which our ancestors have sealed with their blood.
“Your ministers, from corrupt principles and in violation of every duty, have, by various enumerated means, invaded our invaluable and inalienable right of trial by jury.
“They have, with impunity, issued general warrants, and violently seized persons and private papers.
“They have rendered the laws non-effective to our security, by invading the Habeas Corpus.
“They have caused punishments and even perpetual imprisonment to be inflicted, without trial, conviction, or sentence.
“They have brought into disrepute the civil magistracy, by the appointment of persons who are, in many respects, unqualified for that important trust, and have thereby purposely furnished a pretence for calling in the aid of the military power.
“They avow, and endeavour to establish, a maxim absolutely inconsistent with our constitution, that ‘an occasion for effectually employing a military force always presents itself, when the civil power is trifled with or insulted;’ and by a fatal and false application of this maxim, they have wantonly and wickedly sacrificed the lives of many of your Majesty’s innocent subjects, and have prostituted your Majesty’s sacred name and authority, to justify, applaud, and recommend their own illegal and bloody actions.
“They have screened more than one murderer from punishment, and in its place have unnaturally substituted reward.
“And after having insulted and defeated the law on different occasions, and by different contrivances, both at home and abroad, they have at length completed their design, by violently wresting from the people the last sacred right we had left, the right of election, by the unprecedented seating of a candidate notoriously set up and chosen only by themselves. They have thereby taken from your subjects all hopes of parliamentary redress, and have left us no resource, under God, but in your Majesty.
“All this they have been able to effect by corruption; by a scandalous misapplication and embezzlement of the public treasure, and a shameful prostitution of public honours and employments; procuring deficiencies of the civil lists to be made good without examinations; and, instead of punishing, conferring honours on a paymaster, the public defaulter of unaccounted millions.
“From an unfeigned sense of the duty we owe to your Majesty, and to our country, we have ventured thus humbly to lay before the throne these great and important truths, which it has been the business of your Ministers to conceal. We most earnestly beseech your Majesty to grant us redress. It is for the purpose of redress alone, and for such occasions as the present, that those great and extensive powers are entrusted to the Crown by the wisdom of that Constitution which your Majesty’s illustrious family was chosen to defend, and which we trust in God it will for ever continue to support.”
Of each paragraph given in the foregoing the meaning was conclusive, the instance known to all. There is in this petition no statement exaggerated, no sentiment overcoloured, considering that one paragraph alone describes no less than the suicidal measures which dismembered the empire, and cost the mother country the allegiance of “the colonies,” i.e. the continent of America, in these plain words:—
“They [the Grafton administration] have established numberless unconstitutional regulations and taxations in our colonies. They have caused a revenue to be raised in some of them by prerogative.”
However meritorious the cause, it was an offence to a king whose mind, never remarkable for lucidity, was then under “the influence of the worst of counsellors,” as stated in the first prayer of the petition. The document—when the petitioners were, after much discouragement, delay, and many subterfuges, and, “although no time could be fixed for its acceptance,” permitted to approach the presence at a levee—was at last presented; but the king made no reply, but, handing the petition to the lord-in-waiting, turned his back on the presenters, who represented the integrity and commercial greatness of the city of London and were its elected guardians, and addressed Baron Dieden, the Danish ambassador, who was standing in his vicinity, on an indifferent topic.
After the late fulsome reception of “bogus addressers” nothing could be more contemptible than the studied impertinence with which the Corporation of London was treated, and the affront of leaving the civil magistrate to
“skulk about the passages of the Court that he may have a glimpse of His Majesty as he passes along in state, in order to deliver into his hands a remonstrance affecting the most essential interests of above twelve millions of people, who by the sweat of their brow support the pomp and parade of royalty and swell the fastidious pride and coxcombical vanity of empty courtiers.”
It was boldly hazarded at this emergency, from the premeditated affront to the representatives alike of the city and the people, that the rulers, blinded to their own destruction, then concluded—
“themselves sufficiently prepared for the final extirpation of liberty in this island, and that by deliberate insults they were urging the people to commit some outrage, which might give them a pretence for putting their scheme of tyranny into immediate execution.”
If the city, by its dignified and law-abiding demeanour, disappointed these expectations, it was argued that the Court party would not wait for an excuse to wreak their vengeance under some thin disguise of retributive justice, but would proceed to order out the “Scotch Regiment, as in the affair of St. George’s Fields, without waiting for the least appearance of necessity.”
A correspondent of the Oxford Magazine, writing under the signature “Philopolis,” referring to the threatened massacres in St. George’s Fields, and, on the grounds that the late firing did comparatively little damage to the rioters concerned, declared:—
“I have heard it indeed alleged by courtiers in excuse, that all the military execution of that day was solely aimed at Mr. Wilkes, who they hoped would be despatched by some lucky shot, as Herod expected our Saviour would be murdered among the innocents he murdered at Bethlehem. As a proof of this extenuation of the crime, they show flatted balls, which were discharged by heroes planted in proper places for the purpose, and which have left marks in the walls about the windows of Mr. Wilkes’s apartments in the King’s Bench.” “If this has any foundation in truth,” writes “Philopolis,” “I would advise the city to be cautious, and never allow above a dozen of its inhabitants to be seen together at one time, for fear the Riot Act should arrive unexpectedly, with two or three brigades of musqueteers, headed by a trading justice, who may think nothing of the citizens’ lives, provided he has any hopes of murdering Beckford and the two sheriffs through their sides.”
The petition presented by the lord mayor with such difficulty, and after many insolent subterfuges and repulses, failed to bring the king to a reasonable sense of his situation or of the dangers to which the throne was exposed by the reckless and unconstitutional conduct of the administration. Subsequently, on the presentation of a “remonstrance,” the king returned a written reply to the original petition, visiting with severe censure the persevering claim of invaded birthrights, urged by “the afflicted citizens,” and treating their just grievances with reprimand instead of redress; the pleas set forth in the petitions being considered by His Majesty “as disrespectful to himself, injurious to his parliament, and irreconcileable to the principles of the constitution”—a piece of bold duplicity more worthy of the Stuart dynasty.
The vexed question of Middlesex election, the imprisonment of Wilkes, the unconstitutional admission of Luttrell into the House, and particularly the supineness of the King to the petitions and just remonstrances of his people, are embodied in a metrical form, as—
In the March of the year following, after awaiting a response for nearly twelve months, the Livery of the city resolved to draw up a further and more stringent remonstrance; and a meeting was held under the Right Hon. William Beckford, elected lord mayor for the second time, in the interval. In his address “to the Supreme Court of the whole City,” the real dangers which menaced the State were by Beckford traced to their true source, “the comprehensive violation of the right of election”—
“to preserve which right, the Crown had been justly taken from James the Second, and been placed by the people of England on the head of William the Third, and conferred on His Majesty’s family. That the corruption of the people’s representatives was the cause and foundation of all our grievances. That we have now only the name of a parliament, without the substance.”
He observed how improper it was for placemen and pensioners to sit in the House of Commons; “for if a man was not fit to be a Juryman, or a Judge in a cause where he was interested, how much less to be a Senator and justify his peculation.” “He complained of the unequal and inadequate representation of the people, by means of the little, rotten, paltry boroughs.” In the remonstrance drawn up on this occasion, the wrongs of the people were again eloquently urged, and it was especially pointed out that the House of Commons, by the venal majority—
“had deprived the people of their dearest rights. They have done a deed more ruinous in its consequence than the levying of ship-money by Charles the First, or the dispensing power assumed by James the Second. A deed which must vitiate all the future proceedings of this parliament; for the acts of the legislature itself can no more be valid without a legal House of Commons than without a legal prince upon the throne.
“Representatives of the people are essential to the making of laws, and there is a time when it is morally demonstrable that men cease to be representatives. That time is now arrived. The present House of Commons do not represent the people. We owe to your Majesty an obedience under the restriction of the laws, for the calling and duration of Parliaments; and your Majesty owes to us, that our representation, free from the force of arms or corruption, should be preserved to us in them.
“The forms of the Constitution, like those of Religion, were not established for form’s sake, but for the substance. And we call God and man to witness that we do not owe our Liberty to those nice and subtle distinctions, which places, and pensions, and lucrative employments have invented; so neither will we be cheated of it by them, but as it was gained by the stern virtue of our ancestors, by the virtue of their descendants it shall be preserved.
“Since, therefore, the misdeeds of your Majesty’s ministers in violating the freedom of Election, and depraving the noble constitution of Parliaments are notorious, as well as subversive of the fundamental Laws and Liberties of this Realm; and since your Majesty, both in honour and justice, is obliged inviolably to preserve them according to the Oath made to God and your subjects at your Coronation; we, your remonstrants, assure ourselves that your Majesty will restore the constitutional Government and quiet of your people, by DISSOLVING this Parliament, and removing those evil ministers FOR EVER from your councils.”
This manly and righteous remonstrance was presented after many pettifogging slights and indignities, vexations, and subterfuges on the part of the Court and Crown; and there were made various attempts to bring into discredit the authenticity of this document as the expression of the Court of Aldermen. The Corporation of the city, in sixty carriages, proceeded with the various officers to the palace of St. James’s, and were received by the king on his throne. The remonstrance was read; and, in reply, His Majesty read an answer, drawn up in advance, condemning both the former petition and the present remonstrance in unmistakable terms, and ending with an assurance that “he had ever made the law of the land the rule of his conduct, esteeming it his chief glory to rule over a free people;” and then, descending into more palpable falsehoods, asserting, in the face of facts, with a power of dissimulation worthy of Charles II:—
“with this view I have always been careful, as well to execute faithfully the trust reposed in me, as to avoid even the appearance of invading any of those powers which the Constitution has placed in other hands.”
The king was evidently the puppet of more vicious minds, being blessed with but a feeble reasoning faculty of his own. After reading his equivocative answer, and as the lord mayor and the city representatives were withdrawing, the vacuity of his intellect made itself manifest—for it is asserted in contemporaneous accounts, “His Majesty instantly turned round to his courtiers, and burst out laughing. Nero fiddled while Rome was burning.”
The reception accorded to these petitions being far from such as their gravity demanded, fresh agitations commenced in the metropolis and in the provinces, and, on March 30th, Horne Tooke delivered a remarkable address to the freeholders of the county of Middlesex, in which he graphically described both the murders he had seen committed and the conduct of the justices of the peace, who said the ministerial instructions were for the soldiers to fire, and referred to the partiality shown on the trials and the defences made at the expense of Government when it was endeavoured to bring the guilty to justice. At this meeting, “An Address, Remonstrance, and Petition of the Freeholders of Middlesex” was drawn up for presentation, in which it was urged on the king—
“that a secret and malignant influence had thwarted and defeated almost every measure which had been attempted for the benefit of his subjects, and had given rise to measures totally subversive of the Liberties and Constitution of these once flourishing and happy kingdoms.”
“It is not for any light or common grievances that we presume thus repeatedly to interrupt your Majesty’s quiet with our complaints. It is not the illegal oppression of an individual; it is not the partial invasion of our property; it is not the violation of any single law of which we complain, but it is a violation which at one stroke deprives us of the only constitutional security of our Fortunes, Liberties, and Lives.
“Your Majesty’s servants have attacked our Liberties in the most vital part; they have torn away the heart-strings of the Constitution, and have made those men our destruction, whom the laws have appointed as the immediate guardians of our Rights and Liberties.
“The House of Commons, by their determination at the last election for this county, have assumed a power to overrule at pleasure the fundamental Right of Election, which the Constitution has placed in other hands, those of their Constituents, and from whence alone their whole authority is derived; a power by which the law of the land is at once overturned and resolved into the will and pleasure of a majority of one House of Parliament. And if this pretended power is exercised to the full extent of the principles, that House can no longer be a Representative of the people, but a separate body, altogether independent of them, self-existing, and self-elected.
“These proceedings have totally destroyed the confidence of your Majesty’s subjects in one essential branch of the legislative power, and if that branch is chosen in a manner not agreeable to the laws and constitution of the kingdom, the authority of Parliament itself must suffer extremely, if not totally perish.”
The remonstrance from which the above paragraphs are extracted was, together with a petition from the county of Kent, presented to His Majesty at St. James’s; both being received and handed to the lord of the bedchamber in waiting; but no answer was returned.
The electors of the city of Westminster also drew up a similar “Address, Remonstrance, and Petition”—
“their former application to the throne having been ineffectual, and new and exorbitant grievances being beyond patient endurance. By the same secret and unhappy influence to which all our grievances have been originally owing, the redress of those grievances has been now prevented; and the grievances themselves have been repeatedly confirmed; with this additional circumstance of aggravation, that while the invaders of our rights remain the directors of your Majesty’s councils, the defenders of those rights have been dismissed from your Majesty’s service—your Majesty having been advised by your ministers to remove from his employment, for his vote in Parliament, the highest officer of the Law (Lord Camden), because his principles suited ill with theirs, and his pure distribution of justice with their corrupt administration of the House of Commons.
“We beg leave, therefore, again to represent to your Majesty that the House of Commons have struck at the most valuable liberties and franchises of all the electors of Great Britain; and by assuming to themselves a right of choosing, instead of receiving a member when chosen, and by transferring to the representative what belonged to the constituent, they have taken off from the dignity, and, we fear, impaired the authority of Parliament itself.
“We presume again, therefore, humbly to implore from your Majesty the only remedies which are in any way proportioned to the nature of the evil; that you would be graciously pleased to dismiss for ever from your councils those ministers who are ill-suited by their dispositions to preserve the principles of a free, or by their capacities to direct the councils of a great and mighty kingdom; And that by speedily dissolving the present Parliament, your Majesty will show by your own example, and by their dissolution, the rights of your people are to be inviolable, and that you will never necessitate so many injured, and, by such treatment, exasperated subjects, to continue the care of their interests to those from whom they must withdraw their confidence; to repose their invaluable privileges in the hand of those who have sacrificed them; and their trust in those who have betrayed it.
“We find ourselves compelled to urge, with the greatest importunity, this our humble but earnest application, as every day seems to produce the confirmation of some old, or to threaten the introduction of some new injury. We have the strongest reason to apprehend that the usurpation begun by the House of Commons upon the right of electing, may be extended to the right of petitioning, and that under the pretence of restraining the abuse of this right, it is meant to bring into disrepute, and to intimidate us from the exercise of the right itself.”
The representatives elected by the people had done their utmost, as respected the venal majority, to betray their trust and those who had sent them to the Commons. Resistance was countenanced, and, by counter-addresses to the throne, the king was prejudiced against listening to the wishes of the people. This remonstrance elicited his Majesty’s reply “that he would lay it before his Parliament;” a curious conclusion, inasmuch as his afflicted subjects specially prayed therein that the king would be their safeguard against the majority in that body, who had betrayed the nation, and to the deliberation of that corrupted assembly the complaint—which affected the duration of the House—was to be submitted for redress! The remonstrance, which resembled an impeachment of the administration, was, in fact, handed to the ministers under accusation, to be by them resisted, prosecuted, or rendered ineffective at their discretion. The indignant judgments enunciated by “Junius” against these unprincipled politicians, foes to the kingdom, have been abundantly confirmed by the verdict of posterity.
The reception otherwise accorded to the Westminster remonstrance was altogether undignified. When the deputation, headed by Sir Robert Bernard, who had been returned member for that city by the unanimous suffrage of the constituency, arrived at the palace gate, an extra guard of soldiers was immediately turned out, not, however, as a compliment, for—
“although there was not the least appearance of anything disorderly, yet the soldiers behaved in a most insolent manner, and struck many persons with their bayonets, and that without provocation. The Gentlemen having alighted from their carriages, amidst the acclamations of the people, walked through the lane of soldiers, and went upstairs to the Levee Room door, where they were met by one of the Grooms of the Bedchamber, who asked Sir Robert Bernard if he had anything to present to his Majesty? To which Sir Robert replied, ‘Yes, the Address, Remonstrance, and Petition of the City of Westminster.’ Upon which the Groom of the Bedchamber said, ‘He would go and acquaint the Lord-in-Waiting.’ He went immediately, but not returning soon, Sir Robert Bernard proposed to go into the Levee Room, which he did. On opening the door, the same Groom of the Bedchamber said he could not find the Lord-in-Waiting; but should soon. However, the Gentlemen went on, and after some time the Lord-in-Waiting came to them, and said, if they had anything to deliver to his Majesty, he would receive it in the next room, whither they accordingly went; and after some time, his Majesty coming into the room, Sir Robert presented the Remonstrance open. His Majesty delivered it to the Lord-in-Waiting, who delivered it to another, who handed it to the Groom of the Bedchamber, and he carried it off.”
The recreant majority of the Commons, still at the bidding of degraded ministers, continued to address the king with counter-petitions intended to bring into disrepute the remonstrances of the people—those very constituents who had chosen them as the defenders of their liberties.
Finally, another effort was made by the city, and a general assembly was held for that purpose, when the chief magistrate, the Court of Aldermen, and Common Council resolved to renew their petition, and further to consider the king’s “answer.”
“A motion was then made, that the thanks of this Court be given to Lord Chatham for his late conduct in Parliament, and for his zeal shown for the most sacred Rights of Election and of petitioning, and for the promise of his endeavours to support an independent and more equal representation.”
On a motion denouncing the most unbecoming treatment which the city of London had of late experienced from his Majesty’s ministers, it was suggested to draw up the strongest remonstrance possible on the violated right of election. Upon which, Alderman Wilkes, remarking upon the peculiar delicacy of his situation, said—
“that he would not mention a syllable about the person excluded; but if the House of Commons could seat any gentlemen among them who was not chosen by the people, the constitution was torn up by the roots, and the people had lost their share in the legislative power; that the disabling any person from sitting in Parliament, who was not disqualified by law, was an injury to every County, City, and Borough, and a dissolution of the form of government established by law in this Kingdom.”
The recorder cavilled at certain spirited expressions in the drawing-up of the remonstrance, particularly respecting the king’s answer, which he declared could not be considered an act of the ministers, but must be held to be the king’s personally. The committee was shocked at the recorder’s bringing home to the king one of the most unconstitutional acts of his ministry, and without one dissentient voice determined to overrule the objection of the recorder, whereon this functionary protested against the remonstrance in strong terms as a Libel. Alderman Wilkes then rose and mentioned his unwillingness to speak again, but he was forced to it by the recorder’s declaration that the remonstrance was a libel; that he too claimed to know something of the nature of a libel; that he did not speak from theory only, but had bought much experience on that subject; that the remonstrance was founded throughout on known and glaring facts, every word bearing the stamp of truth; that the particular act complained of in the violated right of election was a malicious and wilful act of the majority in the House of Commons, for the minister had declared, that “if any person had only four votes for Middlesex, he should be the sitting member for the county!” The lord mayor, Beckford, confirmed Wilkes’s assertion, concluding, “I was then present in the House of Commons.”
The remonstrance was accordingly presented; in it astonishment was expressed at the censure lately passed by the throne upon the faithful and afflicted citizens, laying their complaints and injuries at the feet of their Sovereign, as the father of his people, able and willing to redress their grievances.
The concluding paragraph was very much to the purpose, and displayed no diminution of firmness:—
“Your Majesty cannot disapprove that we here assert the clearest principles of the constitution against the insidious attempts of evil counsellors to perplex, confound, and shake them. We are determined to abide by those rights and liberties, which our forefathers bravely vindicated, at the ever-memorable Revolution, and which their sons will ever resolutely defend. We therefore now renew, at the foot of the throne, our claim to the indispensable right of the subject—a full, free, and unmutilated Parliament, legally chosen in all its members; a right which this House of Parliament have manifestly violated, depriving, at their will and pleasure, the county of Middlesex of one of its legal representatives, and arbitrarily nominating, as a Knight of the Shire, a person not elected by a majority of the freeholders. As the only constitutional means of reparation now left for the injured electors of Great Britain, we implore, with most urgent supplications, the dissolution of the present parliament, the removal of evil ministers, and the total extinction of that fatal influence which has caused such national discontent.
“In the meantime, Sire, we offer our constant prayers to Heaven, that your Majesty may reign, as Kings only can reign, in and by the hearts of a loyal, dutiful, and free people.”
To this remonstrance the king’s answer was:—
“I should have been wanting to the public as well as to myself, if I had not expressed my dissatisfaction at the late Address. My sentiments on that subject continue the same; and I should ill deserve to be considered as the father of my people, if I could suffer myself to be prevailed upon to make such an use of my prerogative as I cannot but think inconsistent with the interest and dangerous to the constitution of the kingdom.”
After His Majesty had been pleased to make the foregoing answer, the lord mayor requested leave to reply, which, being granted, Beckford made the dignified and noble response which is a matter of history:—