WEBVTT NOTE 18. Wilkes and Liberty, 1763-1764 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:10.320 Volume 3, Chapter 18, Wilkes and Liberty, 1763-1764. 2 00:00:10.320 --> 00:00:17.880 In June 1762, John Wilkes, a country squire who was High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire and 3 00:00:17.880 --> 00:00:24.440 a member of Parliament, set up his weekly newspaper, The North Britain, in opposition 4 00:00:24.440 --> 00:00:29.560 to the Tory-Bute regime in Great Britain. 5 00:00:29.560 --> 00:00:35.800 The British took the Newcastle Whig line in opposition to the harshly expansionist peace 6 00:00:35.800 --> 00:00:41.720 terms the British were exacting from the French, especially their insistence on ousting the 7 00:00:41.720 --> 00:00:46.080 French completely from the North American continent. 8 00:00:46.080 --> 00:00:51.720 At the end of December, the North Britain denounced the purge of the Newcastle Whigs 9 00:00:51.720 --> 00:00:59.360 from the administration and called for a determined popular opposition to Tory rule. 10 00:00:59.360 --> 00:01:06.080 Out of power for the first time in two generations, the disoriented Whigs polarized. The more 11 00:01:06.080 --> 00:01:12.080 conservative moved to make their peace with the Tory administration. The younger and more 12 00:01:12.080 --> 00:01:18.320 radical members, led by the young Marquis of Rockingham, formed an opposition club with 13 00:01:18.320 --> 00:01:26.840 the tentative and worried blessing of Newcastle. On April 11, 1763, Lord Bute was driven from 14 00:01:26.840 --> 00:01:33.280 From Office by the Revolt in Parliament Against the Tax on Cider, a revolt joined by Whigs 15 00:01:33.280 --> 00:01:40.560 and West Country Tory gentlemen. With his old enemy Bute, ousted from office, John Wilkes 16 00:01:40.560 --> 00:01:46.600 felt that his task was done, and he suspended publication of his radically liberal North 17 00:01:46.600 --> 00:01:53.460 Britain. But the Tory regime continued virtually unchanged, and the King's speech at the opening 18 00:01:53.460 --> 00:02:14.180 The Crown decided to take the opportunity to crack down on the annoying Wilkes as a 19 00:02:14.180 --> 00:02:19.980 libeler of the King, and issued a general warrant for the arrest of everyone connected 20 00:02:19.980 --> 00:02:27.660 with the publication of the seditious and treasonable North Britain. In doing so, the 21 00:02:27.660 --> 00:02:34.900 Crown also hoped to discredit the opposition by associating them with a notorious rake in 22 00:02:34.900 --> 00:02:42.980 libertine like Wilkes. Wilkes was summarily arrested, along with forty-eight others connected 23 00:02:42.980 --> 00:02:49.620 with the publication of his journal, and sent to the Tower. Those most closely implicated 24 00:02:49.620 --> 00:02:56.020 in the Crown's Decision, aside from Grenville and the King, were the powerful Secretaries 25 00:02:56.020 --> 00:03:05.020 of State, Lords Egremont and Halifax, Charles Jenkinson the Secretary of Treasury, Jenkinson's 26 00:03:05.020 --> 00:03:12.460 Council, Philip Cotterette Webb, and the Crown's Law Officers, Sir Fletcher Norton and the 27 00:03:12.460 --> 00:03:17.340 Renegade Whig Attorney General, Charles York. 28 00:03:17.340 --> 00:03:23.440 The Whigs were now placed squarely on the spot by the summary arrest of Wilkes in the suppression 29 00:03:23.440 --> 00:03:30.320 of his paper. Wilkes's mentor and patron, Earl Temple, did not hesitate to rush to the 30 00:03:30.320 --> 00:03:37.720 aid of his beleaguered friend. But what would Newcastle do? The aging Whig leader was beset 31 00:03:37.720 --> 00:03:45.080 by conflicting advice on where he, and hence his party, should go. For on his position 32 00:03:45.080 --> 00:03:51.920 in the Wilkes Affair rested the choice of whether the Whigs would subsist in moderate 33 00:03:51.920 --> 00:03:59.480 and respectable dissent from the administration, or whether they would become a party in radical 34 00:03:59.480 --> 00:04:05.600 opposition to the status quo in behalf of liberty. 35 00:04:05.600 --> 00:04:10.920 The Whigs were again being polarized by the larger polarization occurring in England as 36 00:04:10.920 --> 00:04:19.920 as a whole, between the aggressive Tory imperialist in power and the rising agitation of the people, 37 00:04:19.920 --> 00:04:28.800 as expressed in the rebellion against the cider tax, for liberty, property, and no excise. 38 00:04:28.800 --> 00:04:35.480 The younger and more ardent Whigs pressured Newcastle to declare for Wilkes. These liberals 39 00:04:35.480 --> 00:04:42.480 These were led by Lord Hardwick, the father of York, who bitterly denounced Wilkes's audacious libel as not only unjustifiable, but indiscriminate. 40 00:05:05.480 --> 00:05:13.760 Hardwick carefully concealed the secret role that he himself had played in the affair when 41 00:05:13.760 --> 00:05:19.560 he had advised the Crown to proceed with the stamping out of its most ardent opposition. 42 00:05:19.560 --> 00:05:27.840 Pitt, of course, remained cool to the Wilkes' cause. Newcastle finally was persuaded by 43 00:05:27.840 --> 00:05:56.840 Wilkes undaunted fought on brilliantly, his first success being to win a writ of habeas corpus and a release from the tower. Wilkes carried on his fight on two levels, the legal level, aided by his counsel, Sergeant John Glynn, and the political level, aided by his own appeal at the London trial. 44 00:05:57.840 --> 00:06:05.640 At his trial in early May, a cross-section of Londoners—gentlemen, shopkeepers, craftsmen—packed 45 00:06:05.640 --> 00:06:15.080 the courtroom and first raised the thunderous shout, Liberty! Liberty! Wilkes! Forever! 46 00:06:15.080 --> 00:06:21.680 The Wilkite cause had been swiftly adopted by the people of London. In his argument at 47 00:06:21.680 --> 00:06:28.560 the trial, Wilkes made sure that his London followers got the point. The liberty of all 48 00:06:28.560 --> 00:06:35.260 peers and gentlemen, and what touches me more sensibly, that of the middling and inferior 49 00:06:35.260 --> 00:06:44.820 set of people, who stand most in need of protection, is in my case, this day, to be finally decided. 50 00:06:44.820 --> 00:06:52.540 Great Justice Charles Pratt ruled general warrants to be legal, but freed Wilkes on his privilege 51 00:06:52.540 --> 00:06:59.380 as a member of parliament. The crowd, which included George Onslow, on hearing the verdict, 52 00:06:59.380 --> 00:07:04.940 burst into loud cheers, and Wilkes was borne home by many thousands of Londoners shouting 53 00:07:04.940 --> 00:07:20.300 John Wilkes followed up his victory by a direct challenge to the Crown. After his arrest, 54 00:07:20.300 --> 00:07:26.300 his house had been ransacked for evidence, and Wilkes now boldly and heroically called 55 00:07:26.300 --> 00:07:34.620 upon Lords Egremont in Halifax to return his stolen papers. Receiving the expected angry 56 00:07:34.620 --> 00:07:47.620 In his reply, Wilkes now magnificently brought suit against Halifax, Egremont, and Undersecretary of State Robert Wood for theft, and against Webb for perjury. 57 00:07:48.620 --> 00:08:03.620 With widespread support in the press, and numerous bonfires and rejoicings among the people at every Wilkite victory, Wilkes and the printers associated with the North Britain won numerous damaged suits against Wood and other government officials 58 00:08:04.620 --> 00:08:13.620 In the remainder of 1763, the sympathetic juries took care to award heavy damages to the Wilkes forces. 59 00:08:13.620 --> 00:08:19.620 But the big question to be decided was the legality of general warrants. 60 00:08:19.620 --> 00:08:22.620 The Crown case rested on precedent. 61 00:08:22.620 --> 00:08:26.620 For nearly a hundred years it had issued similar general warrants 62 00:08:26.620 --> 00:08:32.620 against persons suspected of seditious libel against the government. 63 00:08:32.620 --> 00:08:37.100 Until Wilkes, their validity had not been challenged. 64 00:08:37.100 --> 00:08:44.220 Hardwick and Newcastle regarded such warrants as perfectly legal, but Chief Justice Pratt 65 00:08:44.220 --> 00:08:52.100 was now increasingly taking the position that both general and specific warrants for seditious 66 00:08:52.100 --> 00:08:56.180 libel were illegal. 67 00:08:56.180 --> 00:09:02.140 The Whig-oriented City Councils of London, Dublin and Exeter voted their gratitude to 68 00:09:02.140 --> 00:09:05.020 Pratt for his new stand. 69 00:09:05.020 --> 00:09:12.940 In the end, Wilkes won his point and a significant victory for individual liberty. 70 00:09:12.940 --> 00:09:20.220 By 1765, Pratt was able to win over the bench and to rule such general warrants null and 71 00:09:20.220 --> 00:09:22.380 void. 72 00:09:22.380 --> 00:09:28.700 As Wilkes piled up victories in the courts during 1763, he became the idol of the London 73 00:09:28.700 --> 00:09:35.580 populace. He was mobbed by cheering throngs, and the merchants and financiers of the city 74 00:09:35.580 --> 00:09:41.940 expressed ardent support for his cause. From the city of London to Surrey County and to 75 00:09:41.940 --> 00:09:48.820 English sailors at port, Wilkes and liberty was the common cry. 76 00:09:48.820 --> 00:09:55.820 In a short time, John Wilkes had sparked a libertarian mass movement in England. The possibilities 77 00:09:55.820 --> 00:10:04.080 for the movement and for Wilkes himself were limitless. But Wilkes, besides a leader, was 78 00:10:04.080 --> 00:10:14.340 a man of personal irresponsibility, of the kind fatal to the leadership of a great cause. 79 00:10:14.340 --> 00:10:20.980 And this flightiness was to lay him low, for as he prepared to bind and reprint the North 80 00:10:20.980 --> 00:10:28.980 Britain, he also blithely and frivolously decided to print for private circulation an 81 00:10:28.980 --> 00:10:37.660 obscene parody of Pope's Essay on Man, which had been written a decade before. 82 00:10:37.660 --> 00:10:46.900 While Wilkes in the autumn of 1763 was lightheartedly visiting in Paris, Philip C. Webb bribed Wilkes's 83 00:10:46.900 --> 00:10:54.980 printer and fellow victim of the General Warrant, Michael Currie, to turn over to him the proofs 84 00:10:54.980 --> 00:10:59.080 of the obscene Essay on Woman. 85 00:10:59.080 --> 00:11:06.580 The Crown now eagerly prepared to proceed against Wilkes for obscenity and blasphemy, 86 00:11:06.580 --> 00:11:13.340 and at the same time to split and neutralize the Wilkite forces, especially the respectables 87 00:11:13.340 --> 00:11:19.940 who were sure to place aesthetics and propriety above the great principles of liberty. 88 00:11:19.940 --> 00:11:26.100 Ironically, the leading role in the prosecution was played by the Earl of Sandwich, successor 89 00:11:26.100 --> 00:11:33.100 to the deceased Egremont, who until recently had participated with Wilkes in the frequent 90 00:11:33.100 --> 00:11:43.620 orgies of a notorious and exclusive club, the Monks of St. Francis. In mid-November, Sandwich, 91 00:11:43.620 --> 00:11:52.540 with enthusiasm, read the essay on woman aloud to the scandalized House of Lords. All the 92 00:11:52.540 --> 00:11:58.540 shocked respectables seized the opportunity to abandon a cause which their devotion was 93 00:11:58.540 --> 00:12:05.800 was at best questionable and took turns in denouncing the harried Wilkes. Pitt's denunciation 94 00:12:05.800 --> 00:12:12.380 was typical. The North Britain series was unmanly and detestable, and Wilkes did not 95 00:12:12.380 --> 00:12:18.820 deserve to be ranked among the human species. Wilkes, in short, was the blasphemer of his 96 00:12:18.820 --> 00:12:27.860 god and the libeler of his king. As the Crown had hoped, the irrelevant essay on woman was 97 00:12:27.860 --> 00:12:36.500 was used to turn opinion against and to condemn number 45 of the North Britain and to vanquish 98 00:12:36.500 --> 00:12:39.420 the Wilkite movement. 99 00:12:39.420 --> 00:12:43.300 Frederick Lord North of the Treasury led the attack for the government in the House of 100 00:12:43.300 --> 00:12:50.660 Lords, charging the North Britain with being false, seditious, insulting to royalty and 101 00:12:50.660 --> 00:12:55.420 intending to excite the people to insurrection against the government. 102 00:12:55.420 --> 00:13:02.220 The Wigs objected only to the charge of falsehood. 35 noble lords managed to hold their ground 103 00:13:02.220 --> 00:13:10.420 to vote for him. They included Temple and the Whigs, Devonshire, Grafton and Portland. 104 00:13:10.420 --> 00:13:16.860 Pitts man, Lord Shelburne, naturally voted to condemn John Wilkes. The House of Commons 105 00:13:16.860 --> 00:13:26.860 condemned No. 45 as false, scandalous and seditious libel by a vote of 273 to 111, and 106 00:13:26.860 --> 00:13:32.760 Parliament ordered it burnt by the common hangman. The middle and lower class supporters 107 00:13:32.760 --> 00:13:40.940 of Wilkes, however, were not as easily swayed from principle by irrelevant aesthetics. At 108 00:13:40.940 --> 00:13:48.940 In the appointed time of the burning on December 3, a large crowd of over 500 Londoners gathered, 109 00:13:48.940 --> 00:13:56.020 pelted the sheriffs with wood, attacked their coaches, wounding the high sheriff, and rescued 110 00:13:56.020 --> 00:13:59.060 the North Britain from the bonfire. 111 00:13:59.060 --> 00:14:06.380 Instead, the mob burned a boot and a petticoat in the bonfire, items symbolizing the hated 112 00:14:06.380 --> 00:14:13.040 Lord Boot and the King's Mother, who had been a long-time friend of Boot. 113 00:14:13.040 --> 00:14:19.760 The Common Council of the City of London demonstrated its solidarity with Wilkes by pointedly refusing 114 00:14:19.760 --> 00:14:24.540 to thank the sheriffs for their part in the proceedings, and when the King went to the 115 00:14:24.540 --> 00:14:30.620 theatre, instead of the customary applause, there arose a general shout of Wilkes and 116 00:14:30.620 --> 00:14:37.620 It was in the same month that Wilkes was awarded one thousand pounds damages from the Crown 117 00:14:38.540 --> 00:14:45.540 by a London jury to the cheers of great London crowds and shouts of Wilkes and Liberty. Probably 118 00:14:47.860 --> 00:14:54.300 Wilkes could still have remained and forged a successful libertarian mass movement, but 119 00:14:54.300 --> 00:15:00.560 wounded in a political duel deliberately provoked by an enemy in Parliament and knowing that 120 00:15:00.560 --> 00:15:09.380 Parliament was about to expel him, Wilkes at the end of December again showed his irresponsibility 121 00:15:09.380 --> 00:15:15.180 by departing the country for France. With Wilkes gone, his enemies could now proceed 122 00:15:15.180 --> 00:15:22.020 at will. In January he was expelled from Parliament. In February he was found guilty of blasphemy 123 00:15:22.020 --> 00:15:29.660 and seditious libel by a grand jury in printing the essay and reprinting the North Britain. 124 00:15:29.660 --> 00:15:37.680 And on November 1, 1764, while still in France, he was declared an outlaw. 125 00:15:37.680 --> 00:15:44.240 And with Wilkes gone, the great Wilkite movement in England necessarily collapsed, at least 126 00:15:44.240 --> 00:15:46.220 for the time being. 127 00:15:46.220 --> 00:15:52.520 Many Wilkites were dismissed from public office, including the Whigs Colonel Isaac Barre and 128 00:15:52.520 --> 00:15:55.040 General Henry Conway. 129 00:15:55.040 --> 00:16:00.480 But Wilkes and his cause still remained high in the hearts of the people. 130 00:16:00.480 --> 00:16:05.820 When the liberal Whig Edmund Burke was elected to parliament two years later, the people 131 00:16:05.820 --> 00:16:11.040 toasted Burke and Wilkes, and Wilkes and liberty. 132 00:16:11.040 --> 00:16:17.800 And though Wilkes himself was gone, the people could and did take revenge on his tormentors. 133 00:16:17.800 --> 00:16:19.800 Sandwich was generally derided. 134 00:16:19.800 --> 00:16:25.440 The informer Michael Curry was scorned as a renegade and blacklisted by all the master 135 00:16:25.440 --> 00:16:33.580 printers and Philip Webb lost his post at the Treasury in mid-1765 as a direct result 136 00:16:33.580 --> 00:16:39.480 of his ill fame in the persecution of John Wilkes. 137 00:16:39.480 --> 00:16:44.880 The sudden flowering of the Wilkite movement had a profound influence on the accumulating 138 00:16:44.880 --> 00:17:14.880 There were many reasons for this. For one thing, the bursting forth of the liberty and property agitation against the cider tax, merging into the Wilkes and Liberty movement, articulated the grievances of the colonies against taxation and against invasions of liberty. In short, the Whig ideals of liberty and property were under attack for citizens. 139 00:17:14.880 --> 00:17:42.000 In brief, the Tory oligarchy was busy aggrandizing the royal prerogative against the liberty 140 00:17:42.000 --> 00:17:49.220 and Property of the People, at Home and Abroad. In these circumstances, it is not surprising 141 00:17:49.220 --> 00:17:55.880 that the Americans should eagerly follow and be inspired by the Whigs and Radicals of England. 142 00:17:55.880 --> 00:18:04.840 Second, the theorists most cherished by the Americans, Locke, Algernon Sidney, John Trenchard, 143 00:18:04.840 --> 00:18:13.000 Thomas Gordon, The Commonwealth Men were precisely the patron saints of radical wig-ism and had 144 00:18:13.000 --> 00:18:15.280 been for a century. 145 00:18:15.280 --> 00:18:22.640 Third, the radical wigs reciprocated American interest and staunchly championed American 146 00:18:22.640 --> 00:18:25.880 liberties in English politics. 147 00:18:25.880 --> 00:18:32.040 And fourth, the particular tactics, especially the spirited mob actions by the English of 148 00:18:32.040 --> 00:18:40.120 of London and of West Country, also provided inspiration to Americans of what direct mass 149 00:18:40.120 --> 00:18:45.660 action could accomplish, above and beyond mere legalistic petitioning of Parliament 150 00:18:45.660 --> 00:18:47.160 or the Crown. 151 00:18:47.160 --> 00:18:53.760 Fuse these current examples of revolutionary mass action in England with those of the great 152 00:18:53.760 --> 00:19:00.240 colonial revolutions against English tyranny in the middle and late 17th century, and an 153 00:19:00.240 --> 00:19:08.480 An Explosive Mixture was at hand. In short, what the Marxists called the objective conditions 154 00:19:08.480 --> 00:19:16.640 and the subjective conditions for any American Revolution were now virtually imminent. The 155 00:19:16.640 --> 00:19:23.920 objective conditions were a crescendo of despotic actions by Great Britain, striking hammer 156 00:19:23.920 --> 00:19:38.440 The subjective conditions were nurtured by their own revolutionary traditions, by the 157 00:19:38.440 --> 00:19:44.800 libertarian ideals common to the English Whigs and themselves, by the inspiring example of 158 00:19:44.800 --> 00:19:51.240 the libertarian Whig rebellion in the home country, and by an increasing willingness 159 00:19:51.240 --> 00:19:59.200 of the American People to Embark on Mass Civil Disobedience and on even more violent forms 160 00:19:59.200 --> 00:20:03.680 of revolutionary overthrow of tyrannical British rule.