m Mr. Grenville, the former Prime-minister, who
on the former occasion, in 1764, had himself moved the expulsion of the
same offender. His speech on this occasion is the only one which is
fully reported; and it deserved the distinction from the exhaustive way
in which it dealt with every part of the question. It displayed no
inclination to extenuate Wilkes's present offence, but it pointed out
with great force the circumstance that the supporters of the motion were
far from agreement as to the reasons by which they were guided; that
some members of the greatest authority in the House, while they had
avowed their intention of voting for the expulsion, had at the same time
been careful to explain that the comment on Lord Weymouth's letter was
not the ground of their vote; that so great a lawyer as Mr. Blackstone
had asserted that that comment "had not been properly and regularly
brought before the House," but had founded his intention to vote for the
expulsion solely "upon that article of the charge which related to the
three obscene and impious libels mentioned in it, disavowing in the most
direct terms all the other articles." That, on the other hand, other
members of deserved weight and influence, such as Lord Palmerston and
Lord F. Campbell, had disdained the idea of regarding "the article of
the three obscene and impious libels as affording any ground for their
proceeding." So practised a debater as Mr. Grenville had but little
difficulty, therefore, in arguing against the advocates of expulsion,
when they were so divided that one portion of them did, in fact, reply
to the other. But it would be superfluous here to enter into the
arguments employed on either side to justify the expulsion, or to prove
it to be unjustifiable, from a consideration of the character of either
Wilkes or his publication. The strength and importance of Mr.
Grenville's speech lay in the constitutional points which it raised.

Some supporters of the ministers had dwelt upon the former expulsion,
insisting that "a man who had been expelled by a former House of Commons
could not possibly be deemed a proper person to sit in the present
Parliament, unless he had some pardon to plead, or some merit to cancel
his former offences." By a reference to the case of Sir R. Walpole, Mr.
Grenville proved that this had not been the opinion of former
Parliaments; and he contended, with unanswerable logic, that it would be
very mischievous to the nation if such