The minds of men, which were, at this time, sensible to every incident that could give them the least irritation, were further inflamed by a dispute between the house of commons and the city of London. In the course of the violent contests between the opposite parties in the kingdom, the boundaries of rational liberty were overleaped, and such licentiousness was practised as filled all the temperate friends of freedom with concern.— This was in nothing more observable than in the abuse of the liberty of the press, which was made destructive of personal as well as national peace. The most respectable characters were not secure from the defamation of anonymous libellers. These infamous writers, throwing their poisoned darts in the dark, gratified their own malice and that of their party, with impunity. The public attention was now called to an abuse of this noble privilege by a complaint made to parliament, that the publishers of news-papers had not only taken the unprecedented liberty of printing the debates, but had misrepresented the matter of the speeches.-Several of them were, forthwith, ordered to attend the house. And, upon a contemptuous disregard of the order, a royal proclamation was issued against them, and a reward of fifty pounds was offered for apprehending each of them.-Wheble, one of them, being arrested and carried before Mr. Alderman Wilkes, was discharged by him; and was, moreover, bound over in a recognizance to prosecute the person who arrested him for false imprisonment.-Soon after, Miller, the printer of the Evening Post, was apprehended by a messenger of the lower house.-But it appearing, upon examination before the lord mayor and aldermen Wilkes and Oliver, that he had been taken by virtue of the speaker's warrant, without being backed by a city magistrate, they committed the messenger ⚫ to prison. This violent opposition to parliamentary privilege excited much indignation and brought the matter to an issue between the contending parties. The lord mayor and Mr. Oliver were ordered to attend the house in their places: and, after warm debates, in which the rights of the city and the privileges of the house were ably maintained by their respective advocates, the question for the commitment of these magistrates was carried by a great majority; on which they were sent to the tower, where they remained till the close of the session; when they were liberated, and all further proceedings relative to the dispute were dropped. Since this occurrence,

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d Annual Register. 68.

VOL. II.

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the

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the parliament thinking it advisable to wave the privilege of interference. and the printers being more cautious, they have been suffered to print the proceedings of parliament and the speeches of its members without interruption.

The ill humour excited in the citizens of London by the imprisonment of their magistrates was afterwards seen in the violent opposition made to an embankment on the north side of the Thames, for the purpose of erecting the adelphi buildings. The opponents of the bill to empower the undertakers insisted on the ancient rights of conservancy in the city, and treated the measure as an invasion of the property which it claimed in the soil or bed of the river. On these grounds they opposed its progress through the two houses. And, on failure of success, they made it one article in a petition afterwards presented to the throne for a dissolution of parliament.

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FRANCE.

THE duke de Choiseul was aware that his sovereign had been long poising between himself, to whom he felt the attachment of gratitude and selfinterest for the services he had rendered him in retrieving the almost desperate affairs of his crown by an honourable peace and in preserving its weight among the European powers by his subsequent measures, on the one hand, and the duke d'Aiguillon, to whom he continued his protection, and who had for his partisans chancellor Maupeou, the duke de Richelieu, and madame du Barré, on the other. He had recourse, therefore, to every expedient which his fertile imagination could devise, to support himself against this formidable league. He hoped to have had the dauphiness for his partisan; that a sense of the dignity to be preserved by an Austrian princess would have kept her aloof from a mistress in whose character even vice was rendered more odious by profligacy. But he had the mortification to see Antoinette, instead of availing herself of her charms to undermine du Barré, condescending to court the minion's favour by joining the herd of courtiers

in

Annual Regist. 70.

in paying her attentions. He made his political measures subservient to the 1771 same ends. Whilst he held out the specious colours of promoting the interests and grandeur of the French monarchy; whilst he was preparing for war by restoring the navy and introducing a new system of tactic, he assisted the Swedish king in those measures by which he meant to bring about a revolution in his kingdom, in order to conciliate his support against the empress of Russia, whose growing power afforded him a fair pretext for embroiling her affairs. He encouraged the Polish confederates to make a strenuous resistance to her insolent invasions of their rights.**—He instigated the Turks to declare war against her; that, by keeping the attention of the northern powers engaged in that quarter, he might facilitate the execution of his own designs against Great Britain, on the success of which he rested chiefly for the re-establishment of his declining interests in the state. Knowing his sovereign's pacific disposition, he endeavoured to stir up war between Great Britain and Spain; in hopes that, could he lay him under the necessity of supporting don Carlos conformably with the terms of the family compact, there would then be a necessity of retaining him at the helm, as the only minister who would, in that case, be capable of sustaining the burthen of state; and that he should thus triumph over his adversaries. Unfortunately for him, all his intrigues were opposed by the king's passions and inclinations, and by those political maxims, by which he was fixed in a pacific line of policy, as most conducive to the welfare of his dominions as well as his own ease **_Under these circumstances, it was

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no

The French minister does not appear to have been yet apprehensive that the rivalship of the courts of Vienna and Berlin would give way to their mutual interests, and that the present good understanding between them would terminate in the partition of Poland. "He saw in the Polish "confederacy," says Dumouriez, who was his confidant, "the means of kindling a war in the north, to disturb Russia. Should the affairs of Poland assume a consistency, this diversion, he "thought, would balance the superiority of Russia over the Turks: should his Prussian majesty "deem this diversion of such importance as to merit his interference, he hoped, in that case, to 66 engage Austria to defend the Poles; and that the prospect of being again elected to the Polish 46 crown, would at the same time, secure them the support of the Saxon court."--Vie du Dumouriez. 1. 184.

** "He employed Rosiere, an officer of much experience," says Dumouriez, "to digest a plan, for a descent on England, with count de Broglio, whom he flattered with the hopes of the "command in it, either for himself or his brother, in order to conciliate their attachment."-Vie du Dumouriez. 1. 184.

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no difficult task for an artful courtesan, who had already established an ascendency equal to that of madame de Pompadour in the plenitude of her power, to supplant him in his majesty's esteem, by convincing Lewis that the duke, by his intrigues, was on the point of precipitating the state into a war which might terminate in its ruin.-The king was affrighted when he found these suggestions verified in the course of the transactions between Spain and Great Britain relative to Falkland's Islands; and was, moreover, disgusted that his minister should presume to carry on a correspondence with the court of Madrid, on a subject of such importance, without his knowledge.* Thus was the king prepared to part with his once-esteemed premier. But it was the duchess de Grammont who, by her haughtiness, gave the finishing blow to her brother's power. Incensed at the disappointment of her ambitious views, she gave full vent to her angry passions: and, leaving the court, she repaired to those parts of the kingdom where she had an influence, on her way to the medicinal waters of Barege; and, with the imprudence of a person actuated by rage, she encouraged the provincial parliaments to resistance by signifying that they would have her brother's protection. The result was perfectly correspondent to the wishes of de Choiseul's enemies. On information of the duchess's conferences with the parliamentary leaders, through the poisoned channel of du Barré, Lewis, whose grand object it was to subdue the refractory spirit of the parliaments, determined to dismiss a minister who thus impeded his design. His indignation was shewn in a letter addressed to him on this occasion. "The dis

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"satisfaction I experience of your services obliges me to banish you to Chanteloup; whither you will repair in twenty-four hours. I would have "sent you much further if it had not been for the particular esteem I have for the duchess de Choiseul, in whose welfare I am much interested. Be

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*

careful that your conduct does not force me to take some other step. I therefore pray God, my cousin, to keep you in his holy protection.”

The

Dumouriez, who already bore a conspicuous part on the political stage, says that Lewis's vanity had a share in these proceedings; that, having carried on a correspondence with his agents in different courts without his minister's privity, he thought himself a great politician; and that du Barré availed herself of this foible to persuade him, that, after having already established his fame in arms, it would now be his greatest glory to be the pacific monarch; and that the confidence reposed in him by all the courts of Europe would render him the arbiter of their quarrels.-Vie du Dumouriez. 1. 224.

f Private Life. 210.

The premier, then, took his departure from the scene of his grandeur;† and had a satisfaction which seldom falls to the lot of a degraded minister, of being saluted with the plaudits of the multitude throughout his journey; which may be considered as an expression of detestation towards those who succeeded him in authority, as well as a tribute of praise for his own services to the state.

This minister's fall was the signal for a renewal of the proceedings against the parliament of Paris; which continued to behave with that firmness which resulted from the rectitude of their intentions. By the mouth of their president, d'Alegre, they desired his majesty either to withdraw his edict, and suffer the law to take its course against the duke d'Aiguillon, or to accept their resignations.-The solemn address of this patriotic magistrate, on a second interview with his sovereign, must have excited other feelings in the king's mind, had not the possession of absolute authority rendered him unconscious of danger, and the love of power made him insensible of merit in all who opposed him in the exercise of it.

"Your

edict, sire, is destructive of all law: your parliament is appointed to "maintain the law; and, that perishing, they should perish with it: these, "sire, are the last words of your parliament."—On their refusal to comply with his majesty's letters of jussion, commanding them to resume their functions, their houses were beset, in the night, by a party of musquetaires; and, on their declaring that they persisted in their determination, they were ordered into exile, and repaired to their respective places of banishment amidst the acclamations of the people, who resounded the praises of their patriotism."-Nor were these the only testimonies of public virtue given on this occasion. When his majesty constituted a new tribunal, invested with the same powers which the parliament had enjoyed, but dependent on the rayal will, the chief secretary, Gilbert de Voisin, whose office had cost him a million of livres, nobly refused to act under it. "He had taken his oath," he said, "to the parliament, and was, therefore, under an indispensable obligation not to act separately or independent of that venerable assembly."

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i

Had not Lewis been so immersed in the pleasures which his vile pan

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