“Wilkes and Liberty”
A word must be said about John Wilkes, a man of disreputable character and considerable ability, who for some ten years—1763-73—contended for the rights of electors against the Whig Government. The battle began when George Grenville, the Whig Prime Minister, had Wilkes arrested on a general warrant for an article attacking the King’s Speech in No. 45 of the North Briton, a scurrilous newspaper which belonged to Wilkes. Chief Justice Pratt declared the arrest illegal on the ground that the warrant was bad, and that Wilkes, being at the time M.P. for Aylesbury, enjoyed the privilege of Parliament. A jury awarded Wilkes heavy damages against the Government for false imprisonment, and the result of the trial made Wilkes a popular hero. Then, in 1764, the Government brought a new charge of blasphemy and libel, and Wilkes, expelled from the House of Commons, and condemned by the King’s Bench, fled to France, and was promptly declared an outlaw. He returned, however, a year or two later, and while in prison was elected M.P. for Middlesex. The House of Commons, led by the Government, set the election aside, and riots for “Wilkes and Liberty” broke out in London. The question was: Had the House of Commons a right to exclude a member duly elected for a constituency?—the same question that was raised over Charles Bradlaugh, a man of very different character, in the Parliament of 1880. Again and again in 1768 and 1769 Wilkes was re-elected for Middlesex, only to be expelled, and finally the House decided that Wilkes’ opponent, Colonel Luttrell, was to sit, although Luttrell was manifestly not chosen by the majority of electors. The citizens of London replied to this by choosing Wilkes for Sheriff and Alderman in 1770, and by making him Lord Mayor four years later. The Government gave up the contest at last, and Wilkes was allowed to take his seat. Besides vindicating the right of constituencies against the claim of Parliament to exclude undesirable persons, Wilkes did a good deal towards securing that right of Parliamentary debating which was practically admitted after 1771.
But the “Wilkes and Liberty” movement was no more than a popular enthusiasm of the London mob for an enemy of the Government, and a determination of London citizens and Middlesex electors not to be brow-beaten by the Government. Wilkes himself always denied that he was a “Wilkesite,” and he had no following in the country or in Parliament.