tter to the Secretary of State. Thomson,
another printer, was in like manner arrested; and, when brought before
Mr. Oliver, another alderman, was discharged by him. And when, a day or
two afterward, a third (Mr. Miller) was apprehended by Whetham, a
messenger of the House of Commons, Mr. Brass Crosby, the Lord Mayor, and
the two Aldermen, signed a warrant committing Whetham to prison for
assaulting Miller. Whetham was bailed by the Sergeant-at-arms, who
reported what had occurred to the House; and the House, as the Lord
Mayor and Alderman Oliver were members of it, as representatives for
London and Honiton, ordered that they should attend the House in their
places, to explain their conduct, and that Mr. Wilkes should attend at
the bar of the House. Wilkes, declining to recognize the validity of the
resolutions which had seated Colonel Luttrell for Middlesex, refused
compliance with such an order, writing a letter to the Speaker, in which
he "observed that no notice was taken of him as a member of the House;
and that the Speaker's order did not require him to attend in his
place." And he "demanded his seat in Parliament, and promised, when he
had been admitted to his seat, to give the House a most exact detail of
his conduct." But the Lord Mayor pleaded the charters of the City as a
justification of his act in releasing a citizen of London who had been
arrested on a warrant which had not been backed by a City magistrate,
and demanded to be heard by counsel in support of his plea. His demand,
however, was refused, and he and Alderman Oliver were committed to the
Tower; but, as if the ministers were afraid of re-opening the question
of Colonel Luttrell's election for Middlesex, they evaded taking notice
of Wilkes's disobedience to their order by a singularly undignified
expedient, issuing a fresh order for his appearance on the 8th of April,
and adjourning till the 9th.

The ministers now moved the appointment of a select committee to
investigate the whole affair; and the committee, before the end of the
month, made an elaborate report, which, however, abstained from all
mention of the offence committed by the printers, and confined itself to
an assertion that "the power and authority of the House to compel the
attendance of any commoner had ever extended as well to the City of
London, without exception on account of charters from the crown or any
pretence of separate jurisdiction, as to every other part of the realm."
And