proscribed. ADDENDA TO CHAP. IV. In particular, he told Lord Hertford that Mr. Pitt proscribed several, particularly his friend Lord Powis, had said little of Mr. Legge, and still less of the Duke of Grafton.'-LORD J. RUSSELL'S Introduction to 3rd Vol. BEDFORD Correspondence. (See also the GRENVILLE Correspondence to the same effect.) Well might Lord Shelburne congratulate Pitt on the rupture of a negotiation, which carried through the whole of it such shocking marks of insincerity.'-CHATHAM Correspondence, from Shelburne to Pitt. 173 Memdenham (E. p. 155.) I need only allude to the orgies of Memden- Orgies at ham Abbey, an old monastic building on the banks of the Thames, where Wilkes and his friends assumed the habits of Franciscan monks, and amused themselves by a mockery of religious rites. It is said that they went through the form of administering the Eucharist to an ape. Sir Francis Dashwood, the late Chancellor of the Exchequer, was one of this party. The historian of the Roman empire, who was his con- Gibbon on temporary, thus speaks of Wilkes: 'He is a thorough profligate in principle, as in practice; his life stained with every vice, and his conversation full of blasphemy and indecency. These morals he glories in, for shame is a weakness he has long surmounted. He told us himself that, in this time of public dissension, he was resolved to make his fortune.-GIBBON'S Miscellaneous Works. Wilkes. No. 45. (F. p. 163.) The resolution was as follows:- The paper Commons' reintituled The North Briton,' No. 45, is a false, scandalous, solution relaand seditious libel, containing expressions of the most un- North Briton,' exampled insolence and contumely towards his Majesty; the grossest aspersions upon both Houses of Parliament, and the most audacious defiance of the authority of the whole legislature; and most manifestly tending to alienate the affections of the people from His Majesty, to withdraw them from their obedience to the laws of the realm, and to excite them to traitorous insurrection against His Majesty's Go 174 Protest of the Lord Camp ADDENDA TO CHAP. IV. vernment.' Pitt moved to omit the last member of the sentence as utterly exaggerated; but, upon a division, it was retained, by a majority of 273 against III. (G. p. 167.) This document, which, according to Walpole, was drawn up by Chief Justice Pratt, is an able and elaborate exposition of constitutional and common law, as well as of common sense, upon this question. But the simple point is forcibly and shortly put in the following passage:-' Nor is this case of the libeller ever enumerated in any of their writings among the breaches of the peace; on the contrary, it is always described as an act 'tending to excite, provoke, or produce breaches of the peace.' And although a secretary of state may be pleased to add the inflaming epithets of 'treasonable, traiterous, or seditious' to a particular paper, yet no words are strong enough to alter the nature of things. To say, then, that a libel possibly productive of such a consequence is the very consequence so produced, is, in other words, to declare that the cause and the effect are the same thing.' The protest thus concludes:- For these, and many other forcible reasons, we hold it highly unbecoming the dignity, gravity, and wisdom of the House of Peers, as well as their justice, thus judicially to explain away and diminish the privilege of their persons, founded in the wisdom of ages, declared with precision in our Standing Orders, so repeatedly confirmed, and hitherto preserved inviolable by the spirit of our ancestors, called to it only by the other House on a particular occasion, and to serve a particular purpose, ex post facto, ex parte, et pendente lite in the courts below.'-Lord's Journals. Lord Campbell, in his life of Lord Camden, expresses his bell's opinion. approval of the resolutions, on the ground that privilege of Parliament should not interfere with the execution of the criminal law of the country. But whatever objection might be urged against a privilege so extensive, it is certain that, by the law of the land, the person of a member of Parliament was protected from arrest in every casc, except that of treason, felony, or breach of the peace. It is equally cer ADDENDA TO CHAP. IV. tain that a seditious libel comes within neither of the excepted cases. It might be competent to either House of Parliament to circumscribe their privilege; but it can hardly be contended that they could have a right to give a retrospective operation to their vote for the purpose of depriving an individual member of the protection which had already attached to him under the existing law. 175 CHAPTER V. THE COLONIAL QUARREL-INDISCRIMINATE SUPPRES- LISH PARLIAMENT TO TAX THE COLONIES-THE Ch. 5. DURING the discussions relative to Wilkes, the 1764 Increase of the minority. minorities had on one or two occasions attained such an extent as to create serious alarm for the stability of the Government; but when that exciting question was disposed of, they subsided to their former level, and there was a fair prospect that public business would, for some time at least, pursue a smooth, though sluggish course. But storm and peril suddenly arose from a quarter where appearances were most serene. At the termination of the war, it became necessary to take vigorous measures for the suppression of a host of smugglers which infested the British coasts, and rendered the Customs' laws nearly inoperative. The royal navy were for the occasion employed as revenue cruisers, and the commanders of ships of war were regularly invested with SMUGGLING IN THE COLONIES. commissions as custom-house officers. It is easy Ch. 5. 1764 177 to believe that men, accustomed to the exercise of arbitrary authority, armed with these extraordinary powers, and ignorant of the usages of commerce, should sometimes perform the new duties assigned to them with a vigour beyond the law. For such excesses, however, when committed in the British waters, prompt and effectual redress was attainable. But when this system was extended to distant dependencies, grievous cases of oppression and wrong were practically without remedy. And the same system which was resorted to for the purpose of clearing St. George's Channel and the Irish Sea from piratical adventurers was deemed equally applicable throughout the wide Atlantic. It is hardly possible to state a stronger instance of the improvidence of the administration than their conduct in this particular. Contraband was, in strict law, the same on the coast of Norfolk as of Newfoundland; but, in fact, there was no comparison between such cases. Smuggling on the Character of British coasts caused a serious injury to the fair trader and to the revenue, while it afforded occupation to the most lawless and desperate of mankind. But the contraband carried on by the American and West Indian colonies was beneficial to the mother country, in a degree which more than compensated for the inconsiderable loss of revenue which it entailed; it was contraband only name, and unless one nation is bound to respect the revenue laws of another-a position which at in colonial smug gling. |