efforts. Nor on this question was there any risk of an immediate divergence of opinion on the part of the followers of Rockingham, who cultivated very friendly relations with the author of the North Briton, nor with Shelburne, who, though distrusting Wilkes and anxious to rescue the City from his undivided sway, recognized that he had become the representative of the political rights and liberties of the subject.
The House of Commons spent the session of 1769 in fierce debates, in which the now united Opposition appeared in full vigour and Barré was especially conspicuous. On one occasion he announced that a motion for rescinding the resolution on seditious libels was to be expected from the Treasury Bench, for the Chancellor when Lord Chief Justice had laid down the law otherwise.[1] On another he baptized Dyson, who, with Jenkinson, had become the chief instrument of the intrigues of the Court, by the name of "Mungo," a black slave in The Padlock, who is there described as employed by everybody, in all jobs and servile offices;[2] telling Rigby at the same time that he was a "jolly eating drinking fellow," who, finding himself in a comfortable situation, seldom spoke.[3] Such are fair samples of the Parliamentary amenities of a period when the licence of Parliamentary language ran fierce and free. By the end of the year the excitement reached the Upper House. The news had arrived of fresh riots and bloodshed in Boston, of the spread of non-importation agreements, and of the contempt and ridicule with which the intended revival of the obsolete statute of Henry VIII. for bringing prisoners from the Colonies to trial in England had been received. The Spaniards had expelled the English garrisons from the Falkland Islands; hostile intentions were rightly attributed to France; at home the grievances of the Middlesex Election were unredressed; and from every quarter murmurs loud and deep were heard against secret influence and irresponsible advisers. Chatham, the inevitable minister in the event of the
