from thence proceeded to Brentford, accompanied by several gentlemen. Mr. Wilkes was returned Member for Middlesex, but Mr. Luttrell had 296 votes. Captain Roche withdrew, and Mr. Whitaker, who had also proposed himself, had 5 votes.
Friday.—This day they declared Mr. Wilkes incapable of sitting in the House of Commons, and the day after, Mr. Luttrell was declared member for Middlesex, and took his seat in the House of Commons. There have been some meetings of freeholders at Mile End, and it is said they mean to draw up a petition to the King to dissolve the Parliament; however, no steps are yet taken.
The excitement, of which the meetings described by Lady Shelburne were the sign, grew daily stronger. Grafton trembled before the storm, but George III. remained undaunted and determined to get rid of Grafton.
It has already been seen how the King on his accession abandoned the Whigs, and setting up a standard of his own, had made his Court a Cave of Adullam to which every country squire with an hereditary hatred of revolution principles, and every Jacobite sufficiently clear-sighted to recognize the hopelessness of the Stuart cause, eagerly gathered himself and his friends. Prerogative was pitted against the privilege of Parliament by the act of the King himself, and both looked round for allies.
Outside the limits of the Court and of the aristocracy lay the rising power of the Middle Classes. The party able to gain their support was certain of ultimate success. "I sell here," said Matthew Boulton to those who, like Shelburne, visited his works, "what the world desires to have, Power."[1] The year which marked the beginning of the ascendancy of Bute had seen the commencement of Brindley's Canal between Worsley and Manchester; in the year in which he fell, Wedgwood had established the Potteries, and Hargreaves was inventing the Jenny. While Grenville was passing the Stamp Act, Watt was discovering the
- ↑ Boswell's Johnson, iii. 158, 347. See too supra, p. 274, where the Mr. Bolden mentioned by Lady Shelburne is evidently Matthew Boulton, the friend and partner of Watt.
