Company in full uniform, escorted the Lord Mayor in his state coach through roaring streets, which, as soon as night fell, honoured the champions of the City and the press with an illumination so general and spontaneous that the very apprentices of Paternoster Row had no excuse for breaking windows.

While the instruments had their triumph, the master hand was not forgotten. The Court of Common Council voted Wilkes a silver cup, and left to himself the selection of the design. In commemoration of the date on which the publisher of the Middlesex Journal had been brought up to him for judgement, he chose the scene of the Ides of March in the Roman senate house, “as certainly one of the greatest sacrifices to public liberty recorded in history." On that singular piece of plate appeared the dictator "in an attitude of falling," and Brutus congratulating Cicero on the recovery of freedom. Above, were engraved the City arms, with a dagger in the first quarter; while below, framed in myrtle and oak leaves, ran Churchill's prayer that every tyrant might feel

"The keen deep searchings of a patriot's steel."

The subject, and the inscription, were in the taste of a man who exaggerated the taste of his age; but none the less was the power of Parliament to keep the country in the dark as dead as Julius Cæsar. A twelvemonth afterwards the Sheriffs, in an address to the Livery, boasted with just pride that the House of Commons "tacitly acquiesced in the claim made by London citizens on behalf of the public at large, that the constituents had a right to be informed of the proceedings of their servants in Parliament." All pretence of keeping the debates secret had by that time been dropped. "Your galleries,” said Burke, on the budget-night of 1772, "are like to break down with the weight of strangers, as you are pleased to call the people of England." The door, once forced, was never locked

again; and if, from time to time, there was talk of shutting it, it was thrust wide open by a hand strong enough, if need were, to have torn it from the hinges. When Colonel Luttrell, in January 1778, stated his intention of moving that strangers should be excluded, on the well-worn plea that he had been misrepresented in a newspaper,-Fox, to whom seven years had taught some maxims of political wisdom even less obvious than that which he now rose to enforce, declared that, in his view, the only method of preventing misrepresentation was by giving more publicity than ever to the debates and decisions of the House, since the surest recipe for killing a lie was to multiply the witnesses to the truth. The reporters might well be at ease as to the future of their craft, when once they had taken down, in black and white, so sweeping and explicit a recantation from the mouth of the most formidable among their ancient enemies.

CHAPTER IX.

1771-1772.

Fox, at this period, a consistent defender of the King's system-The case of New Shoreham-The Grenville Act-Quarrel between Fox and Wedderburn--The Duke of Portland and Sir James Lowther—The Nullum Tempus Bill-Mnemon-Pertinacity of Sir James Lowther-Sir William Meredith introduces an amending Bill, which is opposed, and at length defeated, by Fox-Fox and Burke-Fox sends a challenge to an unknown adversaryThe petition of the Clergy, and its fate-Story of Mr. Lindsey-The Dissenters' Relief Bill-Priestley, and the early Unitarians-Courage and independence of Charles Fox.

He

It must not be supposed that Charles Fox reserved all his combativeness for such far-sounding and historical controversies as those which the House of Commons maintained against the shire of Middlesex, and the City of London. loved the old political system, under which his father had risen to greatness, too frankly and loyally to place himself beneath its standard only on the occasion of a battle royal, or a full-dress parade. Whenever there was a call to arms in the most remote outwork of that stronghold of abuses, behind whose protection the country was with impunity misgoverned, Fox appeared at the threatened spot with all his artillery, almost as soon as the assailants had opened their trenches. His prowess in the cause was a theme for constant discourse and admiration among the rank and file of the Ministerial party; but he never more than half pleased the managers. North, and Thurlow, and the Bedfords had quite wit enough to perceive that his devotion to the very peculiar institutions, which Lord Holland had taught him.

to revere, arose from the generous conservatism of youth, and not from the sordid anticipations of self-interest. They foresaw that an enthusiasm like his, when once it had detected itself to be misplaced, would not be long before it was converted into bitter and most effectual hostility; and they looked forward uneasily to the day when his energy and intrepidity might be directed from the outside against those weak points in their circle of defence, whither, with a promptitude which showed his all too accurate knowledge of the ground, he now flew to post himself on the first alarm of danger.

That alarm never rang more clearly to a discerning ear than when the first committee, which had ever been appointed under George Grenville's Act for securing the purity of the constituencies, brought in its first report. In the November of 1770 there was an election in the borough of New Shoreham, in consequence of the death of a sitting member. The country gentlemen of Sussex, who knew what sort of a place New Shoreham was, kept aloof from the contest, which lay between two candidates, of whom one, in the phrase of the day, was a Nabob, and the other a Caribbee. Mr. Purling, the West Indian, got only thirty-seven votes, as against eighty-seven which were secured by his opponent Mr. Rumbold. The bribery oath was administered to Mr. Rumbold's supporters, and freely taken; but it was noticed that the returning officer, Hugh Roberts by name, put to each of them certain queries. offensive to the dignity of a British citizen; and the surprise, which his conduct throughout the day provoked, deepened into positive stupefaction when, at the close of the poll, he declared Mr. Purling duly elected. When questioned by a committee of the House of Commons, Roberts stated that he was aware that Mr. Rumbold had a legal majority, but that he was aware also of the means by which the majority had been obtained. There was, he said, at Shoreham a company which, instituted

with a view to the promotion of ship-building, the most important among the confessed industries of the town, had for some years past been re-organised on a less worldly basis. Towards the end of 1764 the association resolved to devote its efforts to works of charity, called itself the Christian Club, and swore all its members on the four Evangelists to be stedfast, true, and Those members included the majority of the borough voters; and the society, whether in the commercial or the religious phase of its existence, had, in point of fact, never been anything else than a trades-union for purposes of corruption. On the principle that no man has a right to injure his neighbour by selling his conscience below the market price,and that the skilful and the clumsy, the impudent and the bashful, ought to share and share alike in the wages fund of bribery, the Club, on the eve of an election, made its bargain for the payment of a lump sum, which was divided, after the contest was over, among men who were thus enabled to swear at the polling-booth that they had never received a farthing for their votes. Those votes had been bought by Rumbold for five-and-thirty pounds a piece; and Roberts, who had once been a Christian brother, and had left the fraternity, disgusted, (according to his own story,) at finding that his colleagues were quite indifferent to the nationality of their member as long as they saw the colour of his money,' was in a position to identify seventy-six of the majority as members of the Club. With these facts in his cognisance, he had made bold to take the law into his own hands, and save the expense of a petition by summarily altering a return which no Election

1 "Lord John Cavendish.-Do you remember a meeting of the Club upon a false report of Sir Samuel Cornish's death?

"Roberts.-Yes. They were debating upon the several gentlemen who were to represent the borough. They said they would vote for the member who would give most money. John Wood said; 'Yes, damn him, if he was a Frenchman.'