was. The instances you talked of appear to me more numerous and of greater magnitude than I remember to have heard of at any former period.” These statements present at best a gruesome picture, but we can form from them an idea of the position of the Platform: On one side, high hills of prerogative and pretensions which would have to be laid low; on the other, pestiferous valleys of corruption and abomination which would have to be filled up, before the work of the Platform should be accomplished, and the government of the country brought into the people's own hands. Reform or progress must have seemed well-nigh hopeless then to men desirous of reform, for a vicious circle existed which appeared to preclude the possibility of making even a beginning. If men bribed electors to return them to Parliament, and if the electors were willing to be bribed, and to leave their representatives a free hand in Parliament, what end was there to be to it? Where could argument or reason or anything else intervene? There was, it is true, a small leaven of independent constituencies, there was a small leaven also of independent members of Parliament, and a small leaven of independent electors; but was it possible that they could ever grow to such strength as to leaven the mass? One hopeful sign there was of a political awakening of the people at this election of 1768-a considerable increase in the number of contests as compared with 1761,-hopeful, because every contest gave an impetus to the Platform, and, for a brief time, awakened or stirred the political feelings and curiosity of the people. Even those who were not electors became participators in the bustle and excitement of an election, and thus the circle of political ambitions and knowledge widened. Some fifty-eight or sixty contests took place,' of which eight were in counties, and about sixteen in borough constituencies of a respectable size. Amongst these contests was one for ever memorable-that for the county of Middlesex-which resulted in the return to Parliament of John Wilkes, and in the establishment of the Platform once and for ever as the mouthpiece of the people. 1 See The Political Register, by Almon, vol. iii. p. 341. 2 Berkshire, Cumberland, Derbyshire, Essex, Huntingdon, Middlesex, Norfolk, and Westmoreland. CHAPTER II THE FIRST GREAT PLATFORM CAMPAIGN THE Middlesex election of 1768, remarkable in many ways, is most of all memorable for having brought the Platform so prominently and conspicuously before the entire country as to rivet public attention on it, and to prevent its ever after fading into oblivion. In every way the action of the Platform on this occasion displayed an enormous advance on its previous effort. In the agitation against the cider tax which has just been described, the Platform had been resorted to only to a limited extent scarcely a report of its proceedings finding its way into the Press-and the question at issue had been comparatively a small one, affecting only a few counties in the south and west of England. In the agitation which sprang from this Middlesex election, and which may justly be described as the first great Platform campaign, a constitutional principle of the most vital consequence was involved, affecting not merely a few counties, but every county and borough constituency in Great Britain, and every Parliamentary elector in the country. The actual struggle was between no less important combatants than the House of Commons on the one side, and one of the foremost constituencies in the country on the other, and the various incidents were fully chronicled in the newspaper Press of the time, and circulated far and wide. To trace the struggle from the beginning, it is necessary to go back a few years, for the earlier incidents in connection with it occurred in the period described in the last chapter. The central figure in the strife on the popular side-Fate's puppet as it were-was John Wilkes. He had been elected to and sat in the first Parliament of George III.'s reign as member for Aylesbury. In 1762 he founded a periodical paper called The North Briton, which he made the vehicle for 1 vehement attacks on the Government. On the 23d April 1763 the celebrated "Number 45" of that paper appeared, containing a severe criticism on the King's speech, but throwing all the blame on the Ministers, who, according to the theory of the Constitution, were responsible for it. So daring a liberty was construed by the Tory Ministers into an attack on the King himself, and could not for a moment be tolerated by the then Government. A "General Warrant" was issued by the Secretary of State, directing the arrest of the authors, printers, and publishers of the paper, without even naming or describing them, and it having been ascertained that Wilkes was the author of the obnoxious article, he was seized and sent to the Tower. He obtained a writ of habeas corpus, and was released by the Court of Common Pleas, which decided that, being a member of the House of Commons, the privilege of Parliament had been violated in his person. The King and his Ministers, however, were not to be thus easily balked of revenge, and a formal prosecution was forthwith instituted against him for libel. In January 1764, during his absence in France, whither he had gone for his health, he was expelled from the House of Commons for having written "a scandalous and seditious libel," the “libel” being a paper which had been only written and had never been published, and which had been stolen from his house at the instigation of one of the Ministers. A little later the prosecution resulted in his conviction, and as he did not appear to receive sentence, he was outlawed. The people regarded the vindictive and high-handed proceedings of his opponents as nothing less than persecution, and extended to him their full sympathy. But out of sight abroad, he was soon more or less out of mind. Not, however, for long. In 1768, the seven years of the life of Parliament having expired, he returned home, and on the very eve of the general election appeared on the hustings in Guildhall, and declared himself a candidate for the city of London. 1 Burgh, in his Disquisitions (vol. iii. p. 252, 1775), has described what a General Warrant was. "General Warrants are not a whit more reconcilable to liberty than the French King's Lettres de Cachet. A General Warrant lays half the people of a town at the mercy of a set of ruffian officers, let loose upon them by a Secretary of State, who assumes over the persons and papers of the most innocent a power which a British King dares not assume, and delegates it to the dregs of the people." VOL. I D Beaten there, he at once announced his intention of standing for Middlesex, then a populous constituency, which he did, and he was returned for that county at the top of the poll. As an outlaw he could not have legally stood for Parliament; but the Lord Chief-Justice having decided that the outlawry was illegal, he was freed from all disqualification on that account; and to purge himself thoroughly from all appearance of opposition to the law, he surrendered to receive and undergo the sentence of imprisonment which was hanging over him. How angry the King was at his election may be gathered from his letter to Lord North, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. "I think it highly proper to apprise you," wrote the King, "that the expulsion of Mr. Wilkes appears to be very essential, and must be effected." 1 Whilst in prison, Wilkes addressed a letter to the Secretary of State on the subject of the riots which ensued on his imprisonment, and on the high-handed action of the military; and when Parliament met in the following year the House of Commons, incited thereto by the King, on the 3d of February 1769, voted this letter "an insolent and scandalous and seditious libel,' "2 and upon motion made he was expelled the House by 219 votes against 137, a majority of 82, "which is a much smaller one than one could either wish or expect on such an occasion." Expelling him was one thing, preventing his reelection was quite another. He offered himself again for election, and in his address to the electors he very pointedly remarked "If once the Ministry shall be permitted to say whom the freeholders shall not choose, the next step will be to tell them whom they shall choose.” Within a fortnight he was re-elected. The very next day the now irate House of Commons took the momentous decision which was the cause of all the subsequent trouble, and voted by a mere resolution that having been expelled, he was incapable of sitting in the same Parliament, and that "the election was therefore void." This view was not accepted by the electors of Middlesex, who, on the contrary, in the next month, with much determination and enthusiasm re-elected him unan 1 See The Correspondence of King George the Third with Lord North. King to North, 25th April 1768, vol. i. p. 2. 2 Parliamentary History, vol. xvi. p. 545. imously. On the day following this re-election, so hot now was the temper of the King, King's Ministers, and "King's friends," the House of Commons again declared his election void, and again a new writ was issued. This time a Colonel Luttrell was put up by the King and the Ministry (with a promise to pay his election expenses) to oppose Wilkes. At this election Colonel Luttrell got 296 votes against Wilkes's 1143, and the House of Commons having already declared Wilkes disqualified from being returned, decided that Colonel Luttrell was duly elected, and gave him the seat. "The action of the House of Commons," wrote the King complacently to Lord North,2 "must greatly tend to destroy that outrageous licentiousness that has been so successfully raised by wicked and disappointed men." Other less one-sided men than the autocratic sovereign who wanted to have everything his own way thought differently, and, as the sequel proved, more correctly. The action of the House of Commons had quite a different result from what the King anticipated. No public measure, we are told, since the accession of the House of Hanover excited so general an alarm, or caused so universal a discontent. The gist of the dispute lay in this-that the chosen and elected representative of the electors of Middlesex was not disqualified from sitting in Parliament by any existing law, but solely by a resolution of the House of Commons. Therefore to exclude him without statutory authority, and to seat another candidate in his place, was to make a resolution of the House of Commons equal in effect to an Act of Parliament-that is to say, equal to a law made by both Houses of Parliament and the Crown. If such a thing as this could be done, and if a practically irresponsible House of Commons could erect itself into a despotic power more dangerous even than the Crown itself, there was an end to the Constitution, to the whole system of representation, and to freedom of election. The quarrel undoubtedly was a very serious one. A corrupt and subservient House of Commons, ordered by the Ministers, who were directed by the King himself, had come into contest 1 13th April 1769. 2 Correspondence between George III. and Lord North, vol. i. p. 9. |