Reign of George III. (continued.) page 6

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 and no man was ever yet so wise as Thurlow looked. It must not be forgotten, either, amid his many interested promotions, when he became lord chancellor, that he was 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. He set up as a violent oppositionist with Burke, Chatham, Barre, 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 celebrated 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, and nothing but what was derogatory to Chatham, who had so 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, 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 outweighed the memory of your former services."

Such an administration boded little 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 Home 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 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 J unius, who, in one of his scarifying letters to the duke of Grafton, stigmatised Horne as a supporter of the ministerial candi- ' 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 people. This brought out Horne with his vigorous and 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 solicitor, &c. That whilst in the King's Bench, supported by his constituents, he had lived most extravagantly, drinking large quantities 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 Iiis 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.

On the 21st of January, 1772, the king opened parliament. Amongst the most important motions brought 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!

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- conditioned ships in our ports was only to enable the first lords of the treasury to manage and corrupt maritime boroughs.