Baldwin, the printer, being the same day discharged and reprimanded by the Lords, and the Chancellor, in delivering their reproof, having distinguished between the liberty and the licentiousness of the press, Lord Sandwich moved the House to desire him to print his reprimand, which the other felt as it was meant.
Wilkes demanded to be heard at the bar of the Lords, to justify his writings. They dreaded his appearance; and to shift it off from themselves, desired a conference with the Commons, in which they communicated a vote they had passed, in which they pronounced the censure on Lord Weymouth’s letter an infamous and scandalous libel, and desired the Commons to agree with them. To this they added the evidence. Lord North, at his return from the conference, moved to concur with the Lords; but Grenville said, they must first hear the evidence. Seymour and others reflected on Lord Weymouth’s letter; and Macleane, a creature of Shelburne, said, if Wilkes’s preface to the letter was conceived in gall, the letter itself was written in blood. It was determined to hear the evidence on the 19th, and Wilkes himself on the 20th. Wilkes, no ways intimidated, spread handbills, in which he avowed the publication both of Lord Barrington’s and Lord Weymouth’s letters. Lord North, at a previous meeting of the chief members of the House, had almost pledged himself to go into the examination of Wilkes; but Conway pleaded for moderation, and told them he meant to propose to send back to the Lords to leave him to the law. It was agreed Mr. Conway should throw this out, and see how it was tasted. But the Ministers again changed their minds (probably, by orders from Court), and resolved to go into the examination after the holidays. James Townshend, Phipps, and Lord John Cavendish proposed to do nothing, which Conway approved; but others, desirous of hearing the evidence, brought it on, heard it, and then moved to hear Wilkes’s defence on the 27th, which was agreed to.
Wilkes, on the same day, humbly petitioned the Lords to allow him to be present on the 21st, at the hearing of his writs of error, and produced a precedent for it in 1764. The Chancellor said the cases were not parallel, the precedent regarding an appeal, not a writ of error, and that it would not be allowed in the courts below; yet he proposed to search the journals for a precedent, and, as there was none, this would have been the least exceptionable manner of denying his request; but the warmer Lords calling out, “Reject! reject!” the petition was rejected, and Wilkes was left to complain of a new hardship.