"that bloody scroll." Such language was regarded as an aggravation of
his offence, and the Attorney-general moved that his comment on the
letter "was an insolent, scandalous, and seditious libel;" and, when
that motion had been carried, Lord Barrington followed it up with
another, to the effect that "John Wilkes, Esq., a member of this House,
who hath at the bar of this House confessed himself to be the author and
publisher of what the House has resolved to be an insolent, scandalous,
and seditious libel, and who has been convicted in the Court of King's
Bench of having printed and published a seditious libel, and three[11]
obscene and impious libels, and by the judgment of the said Court has
been sentenced to undergo twenty-two months' imprisonment, and is now in
execution under the said judgment, be expelled this House." This motion
encountered a vigorous opposition, not only from Mr. Burke and the
principal members of the Rockingham party, which now formed the regular
Opposition, but also from Mr. Grenville, the former Prime-minister, who
on the former occasion, in 1764, had himself moved the expulsion of the
same offender. His speech on this occasion is the only one which is
fully reported; and it deserved the distinction from the exhaustive way
in which it dealt with every part of the question. It displayed no
inclination to extenuate Wilkes's present offence, but it pointed out
with great force the circumstance that the supporters of the motion were
far from agreement as to the reasons by which they were guided; that
some members of the greatest authority in the House, while they had
avowed their intention of voting for the expulsion, had at the same time
been careful to explain that the comment on Lord Weymouth's letter was
not the ground of their vote; that so great a lawyer as Mr. Blackstone
had asserted that that comment "had not been properly and regularly
brought before the House," but had founded his intention to vote for the
expulsion solely "upon that article of the charge which related to the
three obscene and impious libels mentioned in it, disavowing in the most