by Edward Cline
Jack faced his host. “That would depend on the nature of his foolishness,” he said. “Mr. Morgann and his ilk and their superiors in London have proofs of the efficacy and practicality of foolishness. Recall all the statutes and laws that already regulate us, here in Virginia, and in every colony. Our salaried wards in London have had no convincing evidence that there is a limit to their own foolishness, and to that of their predecessors. We have certainly not given them any. So, they would not be moved to submit to reason. Oh, I admit that there are men like your father, and Mr. Jones, and some others, who see the compounding foolishness and will attempt to warn others of it.”
Jack took a step near Reisdale and tapped the top page of the documents with a finger. “But I doubt that those others — the ministers and lords who will read and reflect on the sentiments expressed here, then write a proclamation for the king, and draft new laws to be introduced and passed in Parliament — I doubt they can even distinguish the differences between reason, illogic, folly, and whim. If reason were as persuasive as you believe, my friend, there would be no need for jails. Footpads, highwaymen, murderers, thieves — they would not exist. Nor would taxes and Hat Acts and navigation laws and the necessity of proving one’s honesty to dishonest or indifferent drones in the customs service. They would not exist, either.”
He turned away for a moment, as though to collect himself, but then faced Hugh again. His expression had become grim and unyielding. He took a step forward, and with a violence neither Hugh nor Reisdale had ever seen in him before, slammed a fist down on the pages on the table. “Let no one tell me there is an opacity of motive in these, sir! Any man claiming a mere dram of self-respect would be wounded, offended, and angered by what is said here! I am, I needn’t tell you that!” His face became a mask of terrifying, stony defiance. “I am not now, nor will I ever be, except on my own terms, anyone’s mere factor! I’ll see Morland burned to the ground first, and I’ll rot in prison, or perish in the wilds, or go under a royal bayonet, before that is likely to happen!”
Reisdale, startled by Jack’s emotion, at that moment knew that his friend was right. Far down the course of the coming years, the conflict must end in but one way: the inevitable clash of unmutual purposes, in a contest of imperial wills. The motives, Jack’s and those of the authors and ministerial auditors of the proposals, were not opaque, and must take some form of action. Reisdale, the scholar and lawyer, looked up at Jack Frake from his armchair with an awe that was braced with a twinge of admiring fear.
Hugh, also, was disturbed by Jack’s outburst, and by it was convinced of the inevitability of a conflict. Too, he was convinced of the nature and strength of Jack’s character, and that it was something he could count on. But he did not see the conflict as a mortal contest in which one or the other party must perish. He was as certain of this as was Jack that one or the other must.
Hugh and Jack held each other’s glances for a moment, and seeing the certitude in the other, each broke off his defiance, knowing that a resolution was not yet possible. Jack sat down again. Hugh, at his desk, toyed with his brass top.
In the silence, Reisdale picked up the pages and jogged them into a neat rectangle. He cleared his throat and asked, “There is the question now of what we should tell our friends in the Attic Society. It meets in a week at Mr. Safford’s place.”
“Nothing,” Hugh said, “but what I can report from my own observations in London, or from the blameless correspondence of my parents.”
“I agree,” Jack said. “Our friends will learn soon enough the Crown’s intentions.”
“This is true,” Reisdale said. He put a hand on top of the pile of pages on his lap. “If a royal proclamation is the final expression of these recommendations, it will be read at the opening of Parliament next month. Governor Fauquier will receive a copy of it in December or January, and the Courier and Gazette will print it shortly thereafter. Then we shall all see what the Crown intends.” He paused to glance at Hugh and Jack. He sensed that the tension between them had abated. He smiled and asked, “Mr. Kenrick, will you enlighten us about Mr. Wilkes and his cause? I cannot but help think that he will be Parliament’s first order of business.”
“You are right to think that, Mr. Reisdale,” Hugh said.
Chapter 25: The Words
John Wilkes, member for Aylesbury and now dangerously popular, was indeed made the first order of business when Parliament reopened in November, to the exclusion of nearly all other business. By means of bribery and extortion of his printers, a Treasury solicitor obtained proofcopies of his carnal Essay on Woman and freshly printed texts of Number Forty-five of The North Briton for the planned collection of that publication’s numbers.
The government, through its representatives in the Commons and Lords, secured resolutions that the literature was “impious” and “seditious” libel. Number Forty-five was ordered burnt at the Royal Exchange by both Houses, but a mob stoned the hangman and sheriffs assigned the task and rescued the copy from destruction — in the same month that Wilkes recovered, in the Court of Common Pleas, £1,000 from an under-secretary of state. The Commons, in January, 1764, voted 273 to 111 to expel Wilkes, thereby stripping him of the shield of Parliamentary privilege. A grand jury of the King’s Bench, exploiting his unprotected status, in February cited him for his libels, and the court ordered a writ for his arrest.
But Wilkes by now had fled to France, ostensibly to see his daughter, but actually to recover from a wound he suffered in a duel with another M.P. He was declared an outlaw by the court the following November when he failed to appear to answer the charges against him. For the next few years he lived on the charity of friends in the Opposition. He would return to England a few years later, and cause a crisis greater than the one sparked by his “impious” and “seditious” libels.
In the Commons, Sir Dogmael Jones, member for Swansditch, managed to capture the attention of Speaker John Cust, who pointed to him on the second day and allowed him to make his maiden speech. Many who were ready to vote with the government on the libel question wondered, as they listened to him — and they had little difficulty hearing him, for he was a practiced orator, and his every word reached their ears over the noise in the crowded chamber — whether he, too, might someday be a candidate for expulsion.
“…And do we not glory in our rightful power to contradict the sovereign in money and other kinds of bills? Are not our actions in those instances far more cutting to his dignity than a handful of immoderate words? Sir,” said Jones, addressing as was expected of him the Speaker — even though he meant “Gentlemen,” for he wanted no cries of “Chair! Chair!” interrupting his words — “do we not then also question a greater portion of his wisdom? It would be fanciful folly indeed if we presume we did not! Sir, you must allow that we do, and concede that it is most curious that this House has never been charged with a similar offense — at least, not since James the Second!”
Members on the government benches murmured and rustled in their seats. Those on the Opposition benches were silent and attentive. Someone shouted, “Hear, hear!” and Jones continued with his speech.
“As for Mr. Wilkes’s satire on Mr. Pope’s Essay,” he said, “well, that it is lascivious and obscene cannot be denied. However, the logical action taken by able-minded men in matters of indelicate literature is not punishment of its authors, but refusal to read it. I own that I have read the Essay at question here, and more: that I have read better! And better and worse than this Essay may be had for a few shillings or pence on Duck Lane and St. Paul’s Churchyard. It was, in a word — dull!!”
Members on both sides of the House chuckled at this remark. Jones waited until they were quiet again. “My questions for the House, however, are these: Is our hold on moral conduct and propriety so weak and feeble that we fear the power of such a thing? I say that its power is derived from our sheer funk and doubtful virtue! Are we clinging to the precipice of moral salvation with but one tiny finger, fearful that th
e slightest breeze of prurience will send us tumbling into the fiery chasm of damnation? If we are, we ought not to don the weighty mantle of judgment! Are we so unsure of the strength of our moral uprightness that, in order to maintain our pretence of it, we rush to censure a man whose words perhaps summon to our idle thoughts memories or imaginings of the natural delights of connubial bliss?”
Many members on both sides of the House gasped open-mouthed. Jones heard the reaction, and was glad that he had decided not to say, “the natural delights of rogering our wives and mistresses,” as he had planned to, for those words, he knew now, would have caused an uproar and moved some members to demand that he be censured by the Speaker. He went on, uninterrupted, thankful that he had decided wisely. “If we are, sir, then we are either hypocrites and liars, or so saintly and heaven-sent that we cannot credibly account for our children!”
This elicited a greater round of laughter than before, except, of course, among the parsons and the devout, who wished to laugh, but would not.
“But, who among us are truly offended by Mr. Wilkes’s actions beyond this chamber? And who are merely angry with him? If offended, we may rest on the consolation that his character reflects on neither that of this body, nor on our own virtues. And if one is angry with him, this troubling state does not allow us the leave, individually or corporately in concert with others similarly irked, to gag him, to fine him, imprison him, and void his right to sit in this House! Anger of that kind has moved many a highwayman to murder his victim because his victim had little to surrender — or even because he dared speak in protest of the robbery — and anger has sent many a highwayman to Tyburn Tree!”
“Foul words, sir!” shouted a member from the government side. “Insult, Chair! Insult to the House!” cried another. A confusing chorus bellowed at the Speaker, “Take down those words!” “Offense! Slander!” “Apology! Apology!” “Move to censure that fellow!”
Speaker Cust was saved the trouble of deciding what to do when several members from the Opposition benches rose and out-shouted the government benches. “Hear! Hear!” “No outrage!” “Hear him! Hear him!” “Let the honorable member speak!” He waited for the tumult to subside, then nodded once to Jones to continue.
Jones nodded in thanks, then said, “I say that Mr. Wilkes libels neither men nor women with his debauched and lecherous scribblings! I say that the charge of libel against him on that matter is bilious and unfounded, and for these reasons: For a libel to have any legal substance, it must have an object capable of responding to it, and that object must be a person. To my knowledge, neither of those great, idealized abstractions, Apollo and Athena, have filed a suit for libel in any court of law in this nation!” After an imperceptible pause, he added, “And no one, neither god nor mortal, can object to a libel that remains unpublished, as this Essay is! Call it what you will, sir: false, blasphemous, indecent, lewd, or gross — it remains unpublished! And if it were published, I dare the woman vain and inelegant enough to claim that she was its ribald inspiration!”
After another pause, Jones said, “It is my sincere hope that this House will pursue the truth, and not the man. As to Mr. Wilkes’s original remarks about His Majesty, we propose to put him in a second jeopardy over that matter, and, again, over an unpublished, alleged libel. Well, His Majesty is a man. But, then, so was Adam….”
Henoch Pannell and Crispin Hillier, seated together on a tier above the Treasury bench, listened to Jones, but were not among those who protested his statements. They were taking the measure of the man and of their colleagues’ reactions to him. “He is effective,” remarked Pannell to his partner, “very effective. I like his style. It may be his undoing. He stabs with words, and wounds, and shames, and invites a round of stone-casting.”
Hillier nodded in agreement. “Others would say that he beggars his questions. But, they are questions I believe he knows that few here would dare answer with honesty. And that gives him a pile of stones to cast, while they are armed with soft, worn pebbles. Hardly an equal contest, sir.”
Pannell smiled in smug satisfaction. “Well, there you are, sir! He asks the House to elevate itself! What greater slight could one offer? He will ask himself, I’ll wager, once he has absorbed the method of this House: Who among us would wish to? Against his wounding words of stone will be the emery of inertia and what he calls ‘sheer funk.’ Together, they will wear down his stallion spirit! Yes, sir! For each stone he casts, a hundred emery pebbles will answer!”
Sir James Parrot, sitting with his wife in the gallery that faced the Opposition benches below, looked disdainfully down at the man he had bested at the Pippin trial at the King’s Bench years ago. His wife leaned closer to him and observed, “It is a wonder to me, James, that you outargued him at that rascal’s trial. He has almost convinced me to feel sorry for Mr. Wilkes!”
Her husband shook his head, and sighed with the ennui of tired wisdom. “No, my dear. He is merely an actor. A Garrick in gown. But, if I outargued him, Lord Wooten outgaveled him. However, I am afraid for our friend down there that all his speeches here will be but soliloquies spoken to an empty House. You see, he has the hobbling habit of speaking to more than just the question at hand.” He nodded to the nearly four hundred closely packed members on the benches below. “He speaks over most of their hats, and beyond their breadth.”
When he was finished speaking and able to sit down, Dogmael Jones felt flushed with both the effort of his fifty-minute oration and the confidence that he had said everything that needed to be said. As a member above the Treasury bench rose to reply, some members of the Opposition picked their way through the press of bodies to compliment him. He glanced up at the gallery between acknowledgments with a tentative smile for Baron Garnet Kenrick, his wife the Baroness, and their daughter, Alice. The Baron returned his smile with a nod of approval, the Baroness silently pronounced the word “Bravo!” and Alice grinned proudly at him. Jones doffed his hat in answer, and winked at Alice, then leaned on his cane to listen to his respondent across the floor.
He subsequently voted against the House resolution that branded Number Forty-five a “false, scandalous, and seditious libel,” argued with other members in the Commons lobby and coffee room and in the Yard against joining Lords in condemning it to be burnt, and, in January, voted against Wilkes’s expulsion. He made copies of all his speeches for future reference, and recorded from memory significant speeches delivered in the House by friend and foe. He kept his promise to Hugh Kenrick, and sent him transcriptions of his own addresses.
And, he came to the attention of Colonel Isaac Barré, member for Chipping Wycombe, a tall, swarthy man with a musket ball still lodged in one cheek, a disfigurement he received in Canada. He had been at Wolfe’s side when that man died on the Plains of Abraham outside Quebec. His frightening appearance, together with his own frank oratory, made him the terror of other members and government ministers. He and Jones became friends and allies.
Jones was also noticed by other Opposition members, who were less certain than Barré that he was the kind of ally they wished to recruit.
* * *
The business postponed by Parliament in its zeal to punish Wilkes comprised an agenda of important matters. There was George the Third’s Proclamation of October 7th, fraught with implications for the future of the empire. Allied to it was the national debt, now standing at £130 millions, and its annual interest of between £3 and £5 millions, and how best to reduce it. There was the fate of the land and cider taxes to consider, and other revenue issues that affected the royal and national coffers, such as a dismal harvest, which was sure to spark more food riots, and what personal allowances to vote His Majesty and his family.
More immediate matters distracted the colonies. In November, while Parliament was preoccupied with Wilkes, British astronomers and surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon arrived in Philadelphia, hired by the Penn and Calvert families, proprietors respectively of Pennsylvania and Maryland, to settle the boundary
dispute between the two colonies. Also in that month, Pontiac and his Indian allies, frustrated in their obsession with immediate slaughter and destruction, and discouraged that the French were not going to reappear, abandoned their seven-month siege of Detroit.
This was preceded in August by the rout of an Indian army at Bushy Run in Pennsylvania, not far from where the war had begun, by Colonel Henry Bouquet, a Swiss mercenary commanding Scottish and regular troops, a victory that lifted the siege of Fort Pitt. The Indians would continue their raids on Western settlements for three more years, until a treaty ended the unequal contest. Some time after its signing, Pontiac would be murdered by an Illinois, precipitating the extinction of the Illinois by a vengeful Algonquin confederacy of tribes.
George the Third’s Proclamation was read by most members of Parliament with an insouciance abetted by an ignorance of colonial conditions. It created four new colonies and governments for them: Quebec, East and West Florida, and Grenada. It annexed the islands of St. John and Cape Breton to Nova Scotia. It provided generous grants of land to officers and enlisted men who had served with the army and remained in the colonies. It drew a boundary line along the mountains from the headwaters of all rivers flowing to the Atlantic, prohibited colonial settlement west of it, and prohibited colonial Governors and legislatures from selling or patenting land west of it without Crown approval. It reserved to the Crown the right to purchase land west of the line from the Indians. And, it expressly authorized the “use of said Indians” by Crown officers to apprehend any subject fleeing Crown law, regardless of his offense.
Bubbles of incipient rebellion against Crown arrogance by George’s “loving subjects,” both at home and in the colonies, went largely unnoticed by those charged with formulating and implementing the policy. There came into the hands of ministers in office, in 1762, a pamphlet containing an address delivered in the Superior Court of Massachusetts, by James Otis, a Boston attorney. It challenged the legality of writs of assistance.