his seat, but the king determined with his usual obstinacy that the battle should be fought out, and Wilkes was sentenced to twenty-two months' imprisonment. From his prison he did everything he could to excite the mob. His last offence had been followed by a riot in which blood had been spilt, and he charged the ministry with "having deliberately planned the horrid massacre of St. George's Fields." The House con sidered this, and again expelled him. A fortnight later he was re-elected, and next day declared incapable of sitting in that Parliament. But the country was as determined as Parliament; and, on March 16, Wilkes was re-elected, no one coming forward to second his opponent. Next day the House declared the election void.17 At the subsequent election, Colonel Luttrell was brought forward to oppose him. It was considered that this gentleman was very daring in doing so, but he got nearly one-fourth of the votes, and Parliament declared that he was the member. In the end, the country triumphed, for four years later Wilkes was once more elected for Middlesex, and allowed to take his seat without opposition. Eight years afterwards, the House of Commons expunged the orders regarding his elections from their journals, and thus admitted themselves in the wrong in this great constitutional controversy. The struggle on behalf of Wilkes showed the power of popular agitation. A great impetus was also given to the two other important questions. One was the demand for Parliamentary reform, which was checked by the outbreak of the French revolution; the other was the claim that the press should be allowed to report the debates of the House of Commons. This last point was carried first; and, the weight of public opinion being thus brought to bear with increasing force on the House, bribery became a thing of the past. 1. To be a king.' The last words of his mother to him, on the night before her death, were, George, be a king!' 2. In his later years, George was subject to attacks of insanity. The country was governed after 1810 by his son as Regent. The extract is from Thackeray's 'George the Third.' 3. This took place in March 1761. Lord Holderness resigned to make room for the favourite. 6. Pitt resigned on the 5th October 1761. 8. Havannah, capital of the Island of Cuba, be- 9. Philippines, a large group of islands east of further India, belonging to Spain. 10. Peace of Paris, or Treaty of Fontainebleau, concluded in 1763. 11. 12. The famous No. 45. General warrants are contrary to the Habeas 4. The National Debt. Up to this time the national debt had increased as follows:- 13. Privilege. The Chief-Justice had declared (1.) At Anne's accession it had amounted 5. France and Spain. This alliance was called that a Member of Parliament could be arrested only for treason, felony, or breach of the peace. 14. On March 28, 1768. 15. 45. See note 11 above. 16. The real constitutional points were-(1.) Privileges of Members of Parliament; (2.) the right of constituencies to choose their own members. the Family Compact, for the royal families This was the fourth time they had expelled THE WAR OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. AUSES of the War.-The chief causes of this long and disastrous conflict are to be sought in the high notions of prerogative held by George III., his infatuated and stubborn self-will, and in the equally absurd self-conceit of his English subjects. In our colonies we then acted on what was called the colonial system.1 Ac cording to it, they existed for the benefit of the mother country, could export their chief products only to the British dominions, and could import nothing from Europe which had not passed through England. A great deal of smuggling went on; but there had as yet been no serious quarrel, because the Imperial Government had for the most part hitherto left the colonies to themselves. Grenville, the English Prime Minister, now determined not only to put down the smuggling of the American colonists, but to tax them for the benefit of the empire-the mode proposed for raising the revenue being to require that certain documents should be on stamped paper.2 The colonists at once took alarm, and the colonial assemblies declared against the measure. The descendants of the old soldiers of the Parliament began to repeat the grand lesson of the long struggle of their English forefathers against the crown, and Taxation without Representation is Tyranny' became the watchword of the brave patriots who were to fight in America for the selfsame rights that the Englishmen of old had wrung from the tyrant John, the haughty Edward, and the reluctant Charles I. So strong was the feeling, that riots took place at Boston and elsewhere; and the colonists determined to do without English goods, so as to escape the hated imposition. All was in vain, for the king and people at home were deaf to their remonstrances; and in 1766, although the Stamp Act was repealed, the English Parliament passed a bill declaring the legislative supremacy of England over her colonies. Shortly afterwards a new scheme of taxation was introduced, by which the revenue was to be raised by port duties, not by internal excise. The feeling on both sides now became more and more bitter; and when the other duties were removed, that on tea was retained, more to mark the superiority of the English Parliament than as a matter of finance. A circumstance in itself trifling brought matters to a crisis. The East India Company had a great stock of tea in its warehouses, and it was allowed to export this to America free of English duties, so that in the colonies it could be sold at a very low rate, but the hated colonial duty had still to be paid. Three ships laden with tea arrived in Boston." A band of men dressed as Mohawk Indians boarded them, and flung the chests into the sea. When the news reached England, the commercial classes were eager for a reconciliation, and Chatham wished to withdraw all the recent measures, and restore things to their old condition. But the king, the governing classes, and the great body of the people, maintained that the time for conciliation was past, and that America must be A BAND OF MEN DRESSED AS MOHAWK INDIANS BOARDED THEM, AND FLUNG THE CHESTS INTO THE SEA. On the other side of the Atlantic there was as yet no |