DIGITISED MANUSCRIPTS

© 330) opinion that no objection was made in the House when he took his seat, though certainly he had done nothing in the meantime to conciliate his adversaries. Eight years later, in 1792, the House, without a dissentient voice, ordered its clerk to remove from its records all traces of its own arbitrary proceedings in the past. With the unopposed return of Wilkes to Parlia- ment his career may be said to have come to an end, though his life still extended over a considerable number of years. Had he fallen a victim in the earlier days of his constitutional struggles, he might have been considered an apostle of truth and liberty, sacrificed in the people’s cause, his memory handed down to posterity endowed with a halo of martyr- dom, and his name enrolled among those of the great worthies of the past. But Wilkes, perhaps fortunately for himself, yet less so for his posthumous honour, survived himself. The fact of his living peaceably and unmolested for thirteen years (he died in 1797, in his seventy-first year), and ending his days quietly in bed, brought him down to a prosaic level, and deprived him of the sentimental admiration we so gladly accord to those who have suffered for what we enjoy. Wilkes lived lone enough to be reconciled to his great adversary, George III., and to tone down into political insignificance. As Lord Mayor he C