Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 5.djvu/99

A.D.1871.] general; the swearing and blaspheming Thurlow was made attorney-general in the place of Mr. Grey, who was made chief-justice of common pleas. The great seal was taken from the temporary grasp of Mansfield, and given to the honourable Henry Bathurst, who was created baron Aspley. Lord Sandwich was placed at the head of the board of admiralty, sir Edward Hawke resigning; lord Halifax succeeded Sandwich as secretary of state, and the earl of Suffolk succeeded Halifax as privy seal. Some of these changes gave great disgust, but no astonishment to the opposition, who were but too well accustomed to the ambition of lawyers, and their consequent easy abandonment of friends and principles, in the act of climbing.



The year 1771 opened under circumstances which greatly diminished the interest in parliamentary proceedings. As all reporting was excluded from the house of lords, the chief speakers there felt that they were no longer addressing the nation, but merely a little knot of persons in a corner, and consequently the stimulus of both fame and real usefulness was at an end. Chatham says, in a letter:—"The house being kept clear of hearers, we are reduced to a snug party of unhearing and unfeeling lords, and the tapestry hung up." In the commons, the desire of the ministry to reduce that popular arena to the same condition of insignificance produced a contest with the city as foolish and mischievous in its degree as the contests then going on with Wilkes and America. George Onslow, nephew of the late speaker, and member for Guildford, moved that several printers, who had dared to report the debates of the house of commons, should be summoned to the bar to answer for their conduct. Accordingly, these mediums of communication betwixt the people and their representatives were summoned and reprimanded on their knees. One of their number, named Miller, however, declared that he was a liveryman of London, and that any attempt to arrest him would be a breach of the privileges of the city. The sergeant-at-arms dispatched a