DIGITISED MANUSCRIPTS

( 29.) a violent struggle and a burst of enthusiasm, which turned him into the hero of the hour, and enlisted on his behalf the sympathy of some of the noblest speakers in the House. We may assume in defence of this iniquitous decision that the House failed to realise the import- ance of this step and the responsibility which it in- curred. In those days the House of Commons was chiefly composed of men who were bound to the great families of the kingdom by ties of relationship or of interest, whose political supremacy in the affairs of the State was paramount, and by whose influence they had been returned. Far from representing the sense of their constituencies, they sought politics as an amusement for their own profit, looked on the House much in the same light as we do on a club, and treated imperial interests with proportionate levity. In their eyes Wilkes was but a profligate dema- gogue, a worthless agitator. To get rid of him by means fair or foul was of small moment to the com- monwealth, but of great matter to the supreme au- thorities whom he annoyed. They ignored that, contemptible as Wilkes may have been both as a man and as a politician, he was, nevertheless, the repre- sentative of a constituency. By tampering with the constitutional rights of the electors of Middlesex not only a great wrong was done to an individual—this on the above grounds