to elections, that House might by an arbitrary declaration transfer or extinguish the franchises of great bodies of their constituents, change the whole law of election, and annul Acts of Parliament that had been carried for the express purpose of securing the rights of electors. Rather than that such a claim should be acquiesced in, extreme remedies should be resorted to; but it was one of the great advantages of a mixed Government that it did much to make such remedies unnecessary, for each part had a great power of restraining the aberrations of the others. The balance of the constitution was now disturbed, and it was the duty of the House of Lords to aid in restoring it. They were asked to affirm by a solemn resolution the true doctrine of electoral rights, to petition for the dissolution of a House of Commons which had violated the constitution, and to lead the way in a struggle for such a measure of parliamentary reform as would place the representative body in harmony with its constituents.

In addition to these arguments, another doctrine of a very extreme and indeed revolutionary kind was propounded by the popular party. They contended that the introduction of a single illegitimate element into the representative body was sufficient to invalidate all its proceedings, even in cases where the withdrawal or transfer of one vote would make no difference in the decision. In the words of Junius, 'If any part of the representative body be not chosen by the people, that part vitiates and corrupts the whole.' 'The arbitrary appointment of Mr. Luttrell invades the foundations of the laws themselves, as it manifestly transfers the right of legislation from those whom the people have chosen to those whom they have rejected.' The authority of Locke, who was generally regarded as the almost classical exponent of the principles of parliamentary government as established at the Revolution, was cited in favour of this doctrine. 'Governments,' he wrote, ' are dissolved from within when the Legislative is altered. The constitution of the Legislative is the first and fundamental act of society. . . . When any one or more shall take upon them to make laws whom the people have not appointed so to do, they make laws without authority, which the people are not there

fore bound to obey." Neither Chatham nor Burke appears to have asserted this doctrine, but it was strongly maintained in one House by Shelburne, who was usually in alliance with Chatham, and in the other by Sir George Savile, who was one of the most respected members of the Rockingham party, and it formed the burden of numerous addresses and petitions.2 To a practical politician it may perhaps be sufficient to say that if it were rigidly applied it would have invalidated every Act of Parliament upon the Statute Book.

Independently of the question immediately at issue, the Middlesex election was extremely important from the impulse it gave to political agitation outside the House of Commons. There was at first some slight hesitation as to the form which the pressure of public opinion on the members should assume, and in a few cases instructions were sent by constituencies to their members, but it was soon agreed, in accordance with the urgent representations of Burke,3 that petitions to the King were likely to be most efficacious. About seventeen counties," and many cities and boroughs, sent up addresses to the Throne, complaining that the rights of freeholders had been violated, and in most cases petitioning for a dissolution. Great efforts were made to procure counter addresses, but only the universities, four counties, and three or four cities responded, and the preponderance of opinion against the Government appeared enormous. A meeting summoned in the City to support the Government was attended by not more than thirty persons, and was soon broken up in confusion by the mob. Some of the merchants signed an address of confidence to the King, and went in a cavalcade to present it, but they were attacked on their way, and it was only after a struggle of some hours that a small remnant succeeded in reaching the palace. In the meantime a hearse with four horses, followed by a long tumultuous procession, and bearing escutcheons representing the murder of Allen and the murder of Clarke, was drawn

1 Locke on Government, book ii. ch. xix.

• Fitzmaurice's Life of Shelburne, ii. 205.

Burke's Correspondence, i. 169, 176, 177, 184, 189, 235.

Annual Register, 1770, pp. 56

58. Chatham says fifteen counties petitioned, and that these fifteen petitioning counties contain more people than all the rest of the kingdom, as they pay infinitely more land tax.'Chatham Correspondence, iv. 169.

through the Strand to St. James's Palace, to Carlton House, to Cumberland House, and to the residence of Lord Weymouth. The railings of the palace were defended with difficulty; many conspicuous persons were insulted, and the white staff of Lord Talbot was broken in his hand. Five rioters taken in the act were reserved for prosecution, but the grand jury refused to find a true bill against them. The manifest partiality of juries was one of the most alarming symptoms of the time, and one of the chief encouragements to the prevailing violence. For months Luttrell was unable to appear in the streets.3 A man was arrested in the act of posting up a supposed speech of Oliver Cromwell when he drove the members of the Long Parliament out of their House. In July 1769 the Duke of Bedford having imprudently gone to Exeter to receive some local honours, was attacked in the cathedral, and obliged to escape by a private way into the bishop's palace. At Honiton he was assailed with stones, bull-dogs were let loose at him, and his life was in serious danger. Language breathing all the violence of revolution had become habitual. Barré said in Parliament that disregard to petitions might teach the people to think of assassination." A silver goblet was presented to Wilkes by the Court of Common Council when he was elected sheriff, and he chose as the subject of ornamentation the death of Cæsar, with an inscription from Churchill,

May every tyrant feel

The keen deep searchings of a patriot steel.

Alderman Townsend, one of the most active of the City politicians, refused to pay the land tax on the ground that the

Parliament which imposed it was an illegal one, and he actually brought the case before the Court of King's Bench.

6

In July 1769 the Lord Mayor and Livery of London presented an address to the King arraigning the whole conduct of his ministers as subversive of the Constitution, on which alone the relation between the House of Brunswick and its subjects depends; and in the following March they presented a new remonstrance, couched in language such as had perhaps never before been used by a public body to its sovereign, except in the course or upon the eve of a revolution. Under the same secret and malign influence,' they said, which through each successive administration has defeated every good and suggested every bad intention, the majority of the House of Commons have deprived your people of their dearest rights. They have done a deed more ruinous in its consequences than the levying of ship-money by Charles I., or the dispensing power assumed by James II., 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. . . . Parliament,' they continued, is corruptly subservient to the designs of your Majesty's ministers. Had the Parliament of James II. been as submissive to his commands as the Parliament is at this day to the dictates of a minister, instead of clamours for its meeting, the nation would have rung as now with outcries for its dissolution."1 It is a remarkable fact that Chatham himself was suspected of having drawn up this document, and that he regarded it with unqualified approbation. The King in his answer described it surely with great justice-as disrespectful to himself and injurious to his Parliament; but this answer was treated by Chatham and others as a violation of the article of the Bill of Rights which secured to subjects the liberty of petition. The London Livery, undeterred by the rebuff, presented another and scarcely less insolent address, and when the King received it with a few words of disapprobation, the Lord Mayor, Beckford, contrary to all precedent, delivered a long rejoinder, which was composed for him by Horne, and which was afterwards engraven on his statue in the Guildhall, declar

Parl. Hist. xvi. 893, 894.

ing that whoever had alienated his Majesty's affections from his loyal subjects in general and from London in particular was an enemy to his Majesty's person and family, and a betrayer of the constitution as it was established at the glorious and necessary Revolution.' On the other hand, both Houses of Parliament supported by large majorities the most violent proceedings and doctrines of the ministers. Lord North was accused of having declared that petitions for a dissolution of Parliament were unconstitutional in not illegal,' and the King, laying his hand on his sword, exclaimed, Sooner than yield to a dissolution I will have recourse to this.'2

There was little or nothing to counterbalance the unpopularity of the Government. In America discontent and disaffection were becoming continually more formidable, and in Europe the authority of England had visibly declined. The heroic struggle which the Corsicans under Paoli had for many years waged against their Genoese oppressors had excited only a languid interest, and in December 1763 a proclamation was issued, forbidding English subjects to assist the Corsican rebels;' but when the French purchased the island from Genoa in 1768, disregarded the strong protest of the English ambassador, and crushed all resistance by overwhelming forces, the national jealousy of England became actively sensitive. The well-known book of Boswell greatly added to the interest, and the Duke of Devonshire and some other leading persons subscribed large sums to assist the insurgents. The value of the new acquisition of France was enormously exaggerated by Burke and by many other politicians, and it was absurdly represented as sufficient to turn the balance of power in the Mediterranean. By a strange chance which no human sagacity could have predicted, it proved in truth even more important than was feared, for it made Napoleon Buonaparte a French subject.

Nearly at the same time the question of the Falkland Islands brought England to the verge of a war with Spain