Note 9 — Chapter I

[Footnote 9: From a speech of Mr. Grenville delivered at a later period (February 3, 1769, "Parliamentary History," xvi., 548), it appears that the Secretaries of State who signed this general warrant did so against their own judgment. "They repeatedly proposed to have Wilkes's name inserted in the warrant of apprehension, but were overruled by the lawyers and clerks of the office, who insisted that they could not depart from the long-established precedents and course of proceeding." And in one of these debates, Mr. Pitt, while denouncing with great severity Grenville's conduct in procuring the issue of this particular warrant, was driven to a strange confession of his own inconsistency, since he was forced to admit that, while Secretary of State, he had issued more than one general warrant in exactly similar form.]