of John Wilkes, and the question involved in it of the
legality of "general warrants." Chief-Justice Pratt pronounced, with
decisive and almost passionate energy, against their legality, thus
giving voice to the strong feeling of the nation and winning for himself
an extraordinary degree of popularity as one of the "maintainers of
English constitutional liberty." Honours fell thick upon him in the form
of addresses from the city of London and many large towns, and of
presentations of freedom from various corporate bodies. In July 1765 he
was raised to the peerage as Baron Camden, of Camden Place, in the
county of Kent; and in the following year he was removed from the court
of common pleas to take his seat as lord chancellor (July 30, 1766).
This seat he retained less than four years; for although he discharged
its duties in so efficient a manner that, with one exception, his
decisions were never reversed on appeal, he took up a position of such
uncompromising hostility to the governments of the day, the Grafton and
North administrations, on the greatest and most exciting matters, the
treatment of the American colonies and the proceedings against John
Wilkes, that the government had no choice but to require of him the
surrender of the great seal. He retired from the court of chancery in
January 1770, but he continued to take a warm interest in the political
affairs and discussions of the time. He continued steadfastly to oppose
the taxation of the American colonists, and signed, in 1778, the protest
of the Lords in favour of an address to the king on the subject of the
manifesto of the commissioners to America. In 1782 he was appointed
president of the council under the Rockingham administration, but
retired in the following year. Within a few months he was reinstated in
this office under the Pitt administration, and held it till his death.
Lord Camden was a strenuous opponent of Fox's India Bill, took an
animated part in the debates on important public matters till within two
years of his death, introduced in 1786 the scheme of a regency on
occasion of the king's insanity, and to the last zealously defended his
early views on the functions of juries, especially of their right to
decide on all questions of libel. He was raised to the dignity of an
earl in May 1786, and was at the same time created Viscount Bayham. Earl
Camden died in London on the 18th of April 1794. His remains were
interred in Seale church in Kent.