Page:English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the nineteenth century.djvu/338

 was returned to Parliament to serve as member for Westminster, which constituency he continued to represent for nearly thirty years. Perhaps the greatest event of his life was his committal to the Tower under the Speaker's warrant for a libellous letter published in Cobbett's Political Register, of 24th March, 1810, in which he questioned the power of the House to imprison delinquents. He at first resisted the execution of the warrant, and being a favourite with the mob, a street contest ensued between the military and the people, in which some lives were lost. In 1818, we find him moving for annual parliaments and universal suffrage, when the House divided with the result of 100 to 2, the minority being composed of the mover and seconder—that is to say, himself and Lord Cochrane. In 1820, he was found guilty at Leicester of a libel on Government in a letter to his constituents reflecting on the Manchester outrage of the preceding year; a new trial was moved for by himself, but this was refused, and he was sentenced the following February to three months' imprisonment, and to pay a fine of £2,000. In March, 1825, his resolutions for the relief of the Irish Catholics were carried by a majority of 247 to 234; but in later life his restless spirit gradually calmed down, and after the appointment of the Melbourne Ministry in 1835, he surprised and disgusted his party by going into opposition, principally (as he alleged) on account of the court which they paid to O'Connell and his followers in their agitation against the Irish Established Church. For some time previous to the sketch we are about to describe he had absented himself from the House, and otherwise shown his distaste for the persons and principles of the leading men of the party to which he had formerly belonged. The busy-bodies who professed to be the exponents of public opinion in Westminster, pressed him for an explicit statement of his views, and eventually called upon him to resign, and he took them directly at their word. The person brought forward to oppose him was John Temple Leader, then member for Bridgwater, a name which suggested to the artist the pictorial pun of Following the Leader, the "followers" being Lord Melbourne, Lord John Russell, Lord Palmerston, Mr. O'Connell, Sir J. Hobhouse, Mr. Hume, and