It is impossible to give you the detail of so long a debate as Friday’s.  You will regret it the less when I tell you it was a very dull one.  I never knew a day of expectation answer.  The impromptus and the unexpected are ever the most shining.  We love to hear ourselves talk, and yet we must be formed of adamant to be able to talk day and night on the same question for a week together.  If you had seen how ill we looked, you would not have wondered we did not speak well.  A company of colliers emerging from damps and darkness could not have appeared more ghastly and dirty than we did on Wednesday morning; and we had not recovered much bloom on Friday.  We spent two or three hours on corrections of, and additions to, the question of pronouncing the warrant illegal, till the ministry had contracted it to fit scarce any thing but the individual case of Wilkes, Pitt not opposing the amendments because Charles Yorke gave into them; for it is wonderful(505) what deference is paid by both sides to that house.  The debate then began by Norton’s moving to adjourn the consideration of the question for four months, and holding out a promise of a bill, which neither they mean nor, for my part, should I like:  I would not give prerogative so much as a definition.  You are a peer, and, therefore, perhaps, will hear it with patience—­but think how our ears must have tingled, when he told us, that should we pass the resolution, and he were a judge, he would mind it no more than the resolution of a drunken porter!  Had old Onslow been in the chair, I believe he would have knocked him down with the mace.  He did hear of it during the debate, though not severely enough; but the town rings with it.  Charles Yorke replied, and was much admired.  Me he did not please; I require a little more than palliatives and sophistries.  He excused the part he has taken by pleading that he had never seen the warrant, till after Wilkes was taken up—­yet he then pronounced the No. 45 a libel, and advised the commitment of Wilkes to the Tower.  If you advised me to knock a man down, would you excuse yourself by saying you had never seen the stick with which I gave the blow Other speeches we had without end, but none good, except from Lord George Sackville, a short one from Elliot, and one from Charles Townshend, so fine that it amazed, even from him.  Your brother had spoken with excellent sense against the corrections, and began well again in the debate, but with so much rapidity that he confounded himself first, and then was seized with such a hoarseness that he could not proceed.  Pitt and George Grenville ran a match of silence, striving which should reply to the other.  At last, Pitt, who had three times in the debate retired with pain,(506) rose about three in the morning, but so languid, so exhausted, that, in his life, he never made less figure.  Grenville answered him; and at five in the morning we divided.  The Noes were so loud, as it admits a deeper sound than Aye, that the Speaker, who has got a bit of nose(507) since the opposition got numbers, gave it for us.  They went forth; and when I heard our side counted to the amount of 218, I did conclude we were victorious; but they returned 232.  It is true we were beaten by fourteen, but we were increased by twenty-one; and no ministry could stand on so slight an advantage, if we could continue above two hundred.(508)