ting, until he considered that his skill was sufficient to enable
him to take the dastard's hazard in a duel. He seized the opportunity
of the debate on November 15th to describe the writer in the _North
Briton_ as a "coward and a malignant scoundrel." When Wilkes, on the
following day, avowed the authorship of the paper, Martin sent him a
challenge. The challenge was in all respects a strange one. It was
treacherous, because it came at the heels of deliberate preparation.
It was peremptory, for it called upon Wilkes to meet his enemy in Hyde
Park within an hour. It contravened the laws of the duello, because
Martin, who was the challenger, himself insisted on the use of the
weapons with which he had made himself so murderously skilful. Wilkes
accepted the duel with characteristic courage, with characteristic
rashness. He met Martin in Hyde Park, and the amateur bravo shot
Wilkes through the body. It is a further characteristic of the many
elements of good that went to Wilkes's strange composition that, as he
lay on the grass bleeding fast and {67} apparently mortally wounded,
his first care was not for himself and his hurt, but for the safety of
his adversary, of an adversary who deserved chivalrous treatment as
little as if he had taken Wilkes unawares and shot him in the back.

While Wilkes was lying on what threatened to be his death-bed the
feeling on both sides only increased in intensity. The Ministry were
indifferent to the helplessness of their enemy. Wilkes was expelled
from the House of Commons. He was expelled from the Militia. The
common hangman was ordered publicly to burn the _North Briton_, but the
hangman was not suffered to obey the order. An angry mob set upon him
and upon the sheriffs who were assisting at the ceremony, rescued the
_North Briton_ from its persecutors, and in rude retaliation burned
instead the joint emblems of the popular disdain--a boot and a
petticoat. The people's blood was up; the symptoms were significant
enough for any save such a King and such ministers to understand.
While the Ministry, with a refinement of cruelty, were sending daily
the King's surgeons to watch Wilkes's health and proclaim the moment
when he might again be attacked, the Corporation of Dublin was setting
an example that was soon followed by the Corporation of London and by
other corporations in presenting him with the freedom of its city.
While Wilkes was slowly journeying towards Paris, where h