of the author.”  And, in the course of the next few weeks, the House of Commons outran the peers themselves in violence and manifest unfairness.  They concurred with the Lords in ordering No. 45 of The North Briton to be burnt by the common hangman, an order which was not carried out without great opposition on the part of the London populace, who made it the occasion of a very formidable riot, in which the sheriffs themselves incurred no little danger; and, by another resolution, they ordered Wilkes to attend in his place to answer the charge of having published the two works.  But at the time when they made this order it was well known that he could not obey it.  A few days before he had been challenged by a Mr. Martin, who till very recently had been one of the Secretaries of the Treasury, and who was generally believed to have prepared himself for the conflict by diligent practice with a pistol; and in the duel which ensued Wilkes had been severely wounded.  It was not only notorious that he had been thus disabled, but he sent a physician and surgeon of admitted eminence in their profession, and of unquestioned honor, to testify to the fact at the bar of the House; and subsequently he forwarded written certificates to the same purport from some French doctors who had special knowledge of gunshot wounds.  But the Commons declined to accept this evidence as sufficient, and directed two other doctors to examine him.  Wilkes, however, refused to admit them:  his refusal was treated as a sufficient ground for pronouncing him “guilty of a contempt of the authority of the House,” and for deciding on his case in his absence; and, on the 19th of January, before the case had come on for trial, a resolution was carried that “Mr. Wilkes was guilty of writing and publishing The North Briton (No. 45), which this House had voted to be a false, scandalous, and seditious libel, and that, for the said offence, he be expelled the House.”  At a later period of the year, he was tried on the two charges of publishing No. 45 and the “Essay on Woman,” was found guilty of both, and, as he did not appear to receive judgment, in November, 1764, he was outlawed.

So far, it may be said to have been a drawn battle.  If, on the one hand, the minister had procured the expulsion of Wilkes, on the other hand Wilkes had gained great notoriety and a certain amount of sympathy, and had, moreover, enriched himself by considerable damages; and again, if the nation at large was a gainer by the condemnation of general warrants, even that advantage might be thought to be dearly gained by the discredit into which the Parliament had fallen through its intemperance.  But the contest between Wilkes and the ministry was only closed for a time; and when it was revived, a singular freak of fortune caused the very minister who had led the proceedings against him on this occasion to appear as his advocate.  To avoid the consequences of his outlawry, he had taken up his abode in Paris, waiting for a change of