Had they been content with sillily assuming a share in the affections of the people, which they did not possess, no great mischief had been done. By provoking their resentment in the same breath, they had well nigh driven the people into rebellion; and, by making the House of Commons the instrument of their irregularities, they effected a contempt for Parliaments, which, perhaps, did not displease the machinators. Liberty stood in an alarming position: her buckler, the Parliament, was in the hands of the enemy, and she was reduced to beg that enemy to break that buckler--an alternative of almost equal danger, whether granted or refused. It required a man of the firmest virtue, or a ruffian of dauntless prostitution, to undertake the office of opposing Wilkes in the decisive contest for the county of Middlesex. There was a young officer, called Colonel Lutterell, whose father, Lord Irnham, was devoted to Lord Bute. They were descended of a good Irish family, who had been attached to and had betrayed King James the Second; and the morals and characters of both father and son, especially of the former, were in no good estimation. The father had parts, wit, and boldness:[215] the son affected to be a bravo, too, but supported it ill. The son was pitched upon by the junto for candidate for Middlesex; and Lord Holland and his sons openly espoused him. This last circumstance, and the zeal of the Scots, crowned his unpopularity; and lest it should not, Wilkes gave out that Lutterell was to be rewarded with a daughter of Lord Bute. One of the race, not long after, attained a far more elevated match.
So desperate did Lutterell’s cause appear, that great bets were made on his life; and at Lloyd’s Coffee-house, it was insured for a month. A third candidate soon appeared, one Captain Roache, another duelling Irishman, supposed to be selected by Wilkes, as a proper antagonist to Lutterell.
The struggle now became very serious. The House of Commons party--at least in the approaching violence--affected the tone of legality, and ordered the sheriffs to call on the magistrates to attend and keep the peace at Brentford. On the other hand, a new indictment was preferred at Hickes’s Hall against Macquirk, the chairman, for the murder of a constable; but the grand jury would not find the bill; yet the next month a new bill was found against him, and he was forced to abscond. The Treasury offered a reward of 500_l._ for discovering the person who, at the procession of the merchants, had, with a hammer, broke the chariot of one Ross, an aged merchant, and wounded him in several places. The celebrated and unknown writer Junius threw his firebrands about, among so many combustibles, but aimed them chiefly at the head of the Duke of Grafton.[216]