Page images
PDF
EPUB

has effected the second occurrence, cannot possibly be felt through all its force till the deserving object of ministerial gratitude has spoken for himself.

Come forward, Mr. Bradshaw, thou worthy but much injured man, at once convince, and undeceive the public. Tell them, that if a person should exist who dares even to insinuate that the following relation is founded upon stub born facts he is a gross defamer of unbiassed honour, and would extend that rancorous abuse, which hitherto has preyed upon the fairest and most courtly characters, till it asperse

your own.

Mrs. Allenby entered into an engagement with Miss Bradshaw in behalf of Mr. Allenby, her husband. It was stipulated that she should give into Miss Bradshaw's hands the sum of six hundred pounds, which was to have been the purchase-money of the place of surveyer of the pines in America. An application was soon afterwards made for the same place by Captain P—*, who promised that on receiving it he would pay down the sum of eight hundred pounds. In consequence of this promise, the name of Mr. Allenby, already inserted in the list of intended promotions, was erased, and the blank filled up with the name of Captain P, to which was added a written assertion that his appointment was owing to Mr. Allenby's having chosen to decline going. When this affair was examined at the board of treasury, Mrs. Allenby was asked where her husband was during this transaction. She answered, "In Cumberland, assisting in the support of the Portland interest, when Mr. Robinson and Mr. Jenkinson were doing what mischief they could to oblige Sir James Lowther."

The latter part of Mrs. Allenby's declaration occasioned some little entertainment. She was ignorant that the two intimate friends of the Earl of Bute, whose characters she was then drawing, were actually present. Mr. Bradshaw pleaded in excuse that his sister, a milliner near Moorfields, was solely concerned in this business. When Mr. Cooper mentioned to Mr. Bradshaw an intention of lodging a complaint against him, he burst into tears. They could not have been tears of penitence, or they imply preceding guilt.

* Who the person here alluded to is cannot be ascertained.

When Mr. Bradshaw shall have exculpated his conduct, which cannot be arraigned without injustice, he may perhaps. become a conspicuous instance of the prevalence of example. The voice of injured innocence may sound within a neighbouring quarter; and, as the ostensible premier may be questioned on a similar occasion, his Lordship will have an opportunity to revive this long-forgotten truth. However contemptibly the world may judge of ministers of state, they are not conscious to themselves of any guilt.

Q IN THE CORNER.*

LETTER LXXII.

TO THE PRINTER OF THE PUBLIC ADVERTISER.

SIR, June 27, 1770. YOUR correspondent, A Fellow-Labourer in the public Causet, has a claim to our attention, rather from the liberality and candour with which he has stated his ideas than from the force of argument with which he has supported them. He seems to have forgotten that the national resentment has not been so much excited by the exclusion of Mr. Wilkes as by the insertion of Mr. Luttrell. He does not seem to be aware that the discussion of the great question can never be brought on in a new mode as long as Mr. Wilkes is to be the groundwork of the debate; that the arguments for incapacitation of that gentleman were merely personal; that they respected the member returned, without any reference to the constituents; and, therefore, that the substitution of other constituents can effect no alteration in the case whilst the person returned continued the same.

* This, with subsequent letters under the same signature, bear marks of the point, sarcasm, and political antipathies of Junius, and were probably among his less elaborate compositions in his rural retreat, or excursions in the summer season. From May to August he appears this year to have been silent in the Public Advertiser under his more formidable name, and may have thought to amuse himself by waging a minor warfare as Q in the Corner, and thus keep both himself and the public on the alert against their common enemy.--ED.

A letter under the above signature appeared on the preceding day, recommending Mr. Wilkes to stand forward as a candidate for the city of London on the death of Alderman Beckford.

Your correspondent would likewise have done well to have borne in mind that the livery of London have, by the most authentic act of the corporation, declared to the world that the intrusion of Mr. Luttrell has vitiated the present parliament*. With what consistency then can the same body of

* In such popular detestation was the conduct of the ministry and parliament held, with respect to their proceedings in the Middlesex election, that Mr. Alderman Townshend went so far as to try the legality of the Act of Parliament for raising the land-tax, the Alderman having refused to pay it on the pretence that the intrusion of Mr. Luttrell had vitiated the parliament, and negatived its power.

The trial took place June 9, 1772, and the following account of it is extracted from the Public Advertiser of the ensuing day:

[ocr errors]

Yesterday came on in the Court of King's Bench the long-expected cause between Mr. Alderman Townshend and the collector of the land-tax. Lord Mansfield had appointed the trial for 9 o'clock precisely; but he delayed it till near 11, waiting for the Attorney-General, who did not attend. The cause was opened by Mr. Davenport; after which Mr. Sergeant Glynn addressed the jury, and informed them that in common cases it was the custom to content themselves with proving the trespass, and then leave the justification of it to the defendant; but he said the present case required a further discussion from him; that it was an important constitutional point upon which the valuable rights of the whole nation depended. He said he was directed by his client, Mr. Townshend, to conduct the cause as its importance demanded; that therefore he should waive all the informalities in the collector's proceedings; he would admit him likewise to be collector, and that he was authorized by the commissioners; that the single ground of his pleading would be that the commissioners themselves were not authorized: for that a House of Commons, legally chosen by the people, are alone empowered to levy taxes in this country; and he said he insisted, and would prove by evidence, that the persons who passed the Act of Parilament (under which the collector had seized Mr. Townshend's hay) were improperly called a House of Commons, because they were illegally and defectively constituted. He said that to the making of all laws, and the levying of all taxes, it was formerly necessary that every freeholder should assent individually; and especially before a tax was to be levied, the constituents formerly were first referred to, because they were to consent to what they were to pay. Custom and usage (he said) had now made it common for the representatives in parliament to speak for the people, and this was considered the same as the consent of the people, because they were freely chosen by the people for that purpose; and after every election a formal letter of attorney (the indenture) is always given by the electors to the person they have chosen. He said that this implied consent of the people by their representatives depended entirely on their having the free choice of their representatives; for if their freedom of choice was invaded, the reference and implication were destroyed, and the people would no longer have any the least consent in the making of laws or levying of taxes; but that their lives and their property would be absolutely at the mercy of any set of men who

men subscribe to the integrity of the same parliament upon any other terms than the previous extermination of the contaminating object? The introduction of Mr. Wilkes into the

should call themselves a parliament, corrupted by the revenue, and supported by the troops of a weak or a wicked tyrant. He said that this, as far at least as it related to representation, was the case with the present persons who call themselves a House; for which, he said, as they were not chosen, so neither are they acknowledged by the people: the county of Middlesex, he said, was not represented; that one of the members legally chosen by the county had been forcibly and illegally excluded, and another person as illegally and forcibly substituted in his room. Mr. Glynn then gave a very striking account of the absurdity and impudence of Mr. Luttrell's pretensions, and of the infamy of our —, and his abettors and accomplices. He said, the present pretended House of Commons had superseded the election of the county by an unwarrantable resolution of their own; and had, by so doing, seized into their own hands, and for their own use and emolument, the birthright of all the people of England. He proved in the clearest manner that the pretence of Mr. Wilkes's incapacity does not exist in the law; and that the people's right of representation is less than a name if the House of Commons has an indefinite power of expulsion. Mr. Glynn said he would produce unquestionable evidence to the points on which he had rested the merits of his cause; notwithstanding that he thought it unnecessary, because the facts were so notorious, and so well known to the jury themselves, that they could of their own knowledge, agreeably to the laws of the land, give a verdict for the plaintiff even without any evidence. "As soon as Mr. Glynn had finished his speech, and was directing the evidence to be called, Mr. Wallace (the King's counsellor) produced a printed paper, which he said was the Act of Parliament by which the collector levied the tax. As for the objection that had been made by Mr. Glynn relative to the seat of one of the members, or of the legality of the parliament, he said the courts of Westminster Hall had no power to determine.

"Lord Mansfield then rose and said, that he perceived Mr. Glynn wanted that court to retry the judgment of the House of Commons touching the case of the Middlesex election; that is, said his Lordship, he wants to prove that the legislature is dissolved; and that all the Acts of Parliament made since the year 1769 are void. The evidence which Mr. Glynn wants to produce is not by law admissible, and I will not suffer it to be given. 'Gentlemen of the jury, you will find for the defendant.' The clerk then hurried over the form, and said, 'Gentlemen of the jury, hearken to your verdict, &c. You find for the defendant, and so you say all.' Whereupon, one of the jury, Mr. Long, said he did not consent to that verdict. This dissent caused some embarrassment to Lord Mansfield, which he soon got over by saying, 'Gentlemen, you are sworn to give a verdict according to the evidence; now no evidence has been produced to you against the defendant; therefore you must find for him. You cannot try facts by notoriety, that is not law, you must go by evidence, and you have heard no evidence; you must find for the defendant.'

[ocr errors]

The jury accordingly acquitted the defendant.

If

House is in itself a circumstance of little importance. parliament and the county of Middlesex had gone on in an eternal circulation of expulsions and returns, the essence of that assembly would not have been affected. The indispensable point is that the corrupt member should be lopped off; a point that will hardly be compassed by an event of such indifference to the public as the mere seating Mr. Wilkes in the House of Commons a representative of the city of London.

Upon the plan of your correspondent, the prosecutors, indeed, will be changed, but the cause will still be the same. It is in the power of administration alone to vary and extend the cause, by arbitrarily incapacitating another member legally elected; a measure which they do in truth tremble at the thoughts of."

[ocr errors]

In conclusion: the restoration of parliament must begin in the person of Mr. Luttrell; nor can the injury to the people of England be heightened in the person of Mr. Wilkes. Every county, every borough, is already as essentially affected as the county of Middlesex. It is an eternal truth in the political as well as the mystical body, that "where one member suffers all the members suffer with it."

I am,

A LABOURER IN THE SAME CAUSE.

LETTER LXXIII.

REPLY TO Q IN THE CORNER.

SIR, Southampton Street, Bloomsbury, June 27, 1770. HAVING, to my great surprise, seen in a letter published in your paper of yesterday, signed Q in the Corner, the following paragraph, "When Mr. Cooper mentioned to Mr. Bradshaw an intention of lodging a complaint against him, he burst into tears," I think myself bound in honour and in justice to declare, that the whole of this assertion is false and groundless I never mentioned to Mr. Bradshaw any intention of lodging a complaint against him; I never heard of any such

« PreviousContinue »