vely by a fresh event in connection with
Middlesex. Cooke, who was the colleague of Wilkes in the
representation of the county, died. Serjeant Glynn, who had made
himself conspicuous as the champion of Wilkes and the advocate of the
popular cause, came forward to contest the vacant seat, and carried the
constituency in spite of the most determined efforts on the part of the
royal faction to defeat him. There were more riots, more deaths on the
popular side, more trials, more convictions for murder and more pardons
of the condemned men. The agitation which had been burning at a steady
heat blazed up into a flame. Wilkes made every use of the opportunity.
He had succeeded in getting a copy of the letter which Lord Weymouth
had sent to the magistrates, the letter in which Lord Weymouth had
practically urged the magistrates to fire upon the people. Wilkes
immediately sent it to the _St. James's Chronicle_, a tri-weekly
independent Whig journal which had been started in 1760. The _St.
James's Chronicle_ printed the letter, and Wilkes's own letter
accompanying it, in which he accused the Ministry of having planned and
determined upon the "horrid massacre of St. George's Fields." The
letter, said Wilkes, "shows how long a hellish project can be brooded
over by some infernal {125} spirits without one moment's remorse." It
may be admitted that if the language of Wilkes's enemies in the two
Houses was strong even to ruffianism, Wilkes could and did give them as
good as he got in the way of invective and vituperation.

The Government, goaded into fury by this daring provocation, resolved
to make an example of the offender. Lord Barrington brought the letter
formally before the House of Commons. The House of Commons immediately
voted it a libel, and summoned Wilkes from his prison to the bar of the
House. On February 3, 1769, Wilkes appeared before the Commons. With
perfect composure he admitted the authorship of the letter to the _St.
James's Chronicle_, and, with an audacity that exasperated the House,
he proclaimed his regret that he had not expressed himself upon the
subject in stronger terms, and added that he should certainly do so
whenever a similar occasion should present itself. "Whenever," he
said, "a Secretary of State shall dare to write so bloody a scroll, I
will through life dare to write such prefatory remarks, as well as to
make my appeal to the nation on the occasion." Wilkes found champions
in the H