he Secretaries of State who signed this general warrant did so against
their own judgment. "They repeatedly proposed to have Wilkes's name
inserted in the warrant of apprehension, but were overruled by the
lawyers and clerks of the office, who insisted that they could not
depart from the long-established precedents and course of proceeding."
And in one of these debates, Mr. Pitt, while denouncing with great
severity Grenville's conduct in procuring the issue of this particular
warrant, was driven to a strange confession of his own inconsistency,
since he was forced to admit that, while Secretary of State, he had
issued more than one general warrant in exactly similar form.]

[Footnote 10: Strange to say, it does not seem absolutely certain that
Wilkes was the author of the "Essay on Woman." Horace Walpole eventually
learned, or believed that he had learned, that the author was a Mr.
Thomas Potter. (See Walpole's "George III.," i., 310; and Cunningham's
"Note on his Correspondence," iv., 126.)]

[Footnote 11: These are the words of the resolution.--_Parliamentary
History_, xvi., 537. But it does not appear what the three libels were.
The "Essay on Woman" was one, the paraphrase of "Veni Creator" was a
second; no third of that character is mentioned.]

[Footnote 12: The last resolution is approved by Mr. Hallam. "If a few
precedents were to determine all controversies of constitutional law, it
is plain enough from the journals that the House has assumed the power
of incapacitation. But as such authority is highly dangerous and
unnecessary for any good purpose, and as, according to all legal rules,
so extraordinary a power could not be supported except by a sort of
prescription that cannot be shown, the final resolution of the House of
Commons, which condemned the votes passed in times of great excitement,
appears far more consonant to first principles."--_Constitutional
History_, iii., 357.]

[Footnote 13: Adolphus, "History of England," i., 484.]

[Footnote 14: An idea of the license which the newspapers complained of
had permitted themselves at this time may be derived from the manner in
which one of them had introduced a speech of Mr. Jeremiah Dyson, M.P.
for Weymouth, and a Commissioner of the Treasury: "Jeremiah Weymouth,
the d----n of the kingdom, spoke as follows." And it may seem that the
Opposition (for the affair was made a party question) can hardly be
acquitted of a discreditable indifference to the dignit