A debate of singularly angry excitement arose on the reception of this return.  Even lawyers, such as Mr. De Grey, the Attorney-general, and Sir Fletcher Norton, who had been Attorney-general, were not ashamed to denounce the conduct of the sheriff in returning Mr. Wilkes as “highly improper and indecent,” as “a flying in the face of a resolution of the House of Commons;” and Sir Fletcher even ventured to advance the proposition that, “as the Commons were acting in a judicial capacity, their resolutions were equal to law.”  Lord North, too, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as we learn from the “Parliamentary History,” “spoke long, but chiefly to the passions.  He described Mr. Wilkes and his actions in a lively manner; showed the variety of troubles which he had given the ministry; and that unless, by voting in Mr. Luttrell, an end were put to this debate, the whole kingdom would be in confusion; though he owned that he did not think that measure would put an end to the distractions.  He spoke much more to the expediency than to the legality of the measure proposed.”

On the other side, it was contended by several members, Burke and Mr. Grenville being of the number, that “the House of Commons alone could not make a law binding any body but themselves.  That, if they could disqualify one person, they could disqualify as many as they pleased, and thus get into their own hands the whole power of the government;” and precedents were produced to prove that votes of the House of Lords, and also of the House of Commons, regarding their own members, had been disregarded by the judges of the Court of King’s Bench as being contrary to law.  But the minister was secure of the steadiness of his adherents, and a majority of 221 to 152 declared that Mr. Luttrell had been duly elected.

But Lord North was correct in his anticipation that their vote would not put an end to the agitation on the question, and it was renewed in the next session in a manner which at one time threatened to produce a breach between the two Houses.

The “Parliamentary History” closes its report of the debate on the resolution by which Mr. Luttrell was seated with a summary of the arguments used in it, taken from the “Annual Register,” which, as is universally known, was at this time edited by Mr. Burke.  It is a very fair and candid abstract, which, in fact, puts the whole question on one single issue, “that the House of Commons is the sole court of judicature in all cases of election, and that this authority is derived from the first principles of our government, viz., the necessary independence of the three branches of the Legislature.”  But, though that doctrine was fully admitted by the Opposition, they made “that very admission a ground for reviving the question in the next session, by moving for a resolution which should declare that, ’being a Court of Judicature, the House of Commons, in deciding matters of election, was bound to judge