[Sidenote: Chatham's illness and mental failure. Jan. 1767.] [Sidenote: Townshend's financial measures.] While Chatham was thus absent from his post his reckless Chancellor of the Exchequer brought in a scheme for again raising revenue from America. The sum was indeed a very small one--£40,000, and raised upon tea, glass, and paper, and therefore falling, it might be urged, under the head of those mercantile arrangements which the colonies admitted the right of Parliament to make; but in the present state of affairs in America it was a mere act of madness. The repeal of the Stamp Act had been made conditional on the repayment of property injured in the riots. This the Assemblies had agreed to only with much grumbling, and the Assembly of New York had gone so far in its opposition to a requisition for supplying necessaries to the troops that it had been suspended. While America was in this irritable condition Townshend's measure came to inflame the smouldering mass. [Sidenote: Corruption of Parliament. 1768.] [Sidenote: Wilkes elected for Middlesex. 1768.] What Chatham had spoken of as the rotten part of the Constitution was, early in the year 1768, brought into full play. There was a general election, in which bribery and the purchase of seats were shamelessly employed. £4000 is said to have been the average price of a small borough. Oxford offered to re-elect its members for £7500, to be applied to the liquidation of a corporation debt; and to show how ridiculously inefficient the representation was, it may be mentioned that in a population of eight millions there were only a hundred and sixty thousand voters. The people were by this time beginning, though perhaps somewhat blindly, to feel that the representative body did not really represent them, and, as usual, they fixed upon one individual, and that not a very worthy one, as a representative of this feeling. Wilkes had already been a popular martyr and the victim of the vengeance both of King and Parliament. He now presented himself for election in London. He was there rejected, but immediately afterwards elected by a large majority in the county of Middlesex. His election produced riots in London, and the Government--contrary probably to their own judgment, and urged by the King--determined to interfere. Wilkes was apprehended as an outlaw, and riots ensued, which were suppressed only by the use of the troops. Twenty people were killed and wounded. The military were not only acquitted when tried upon the charge of murder, but were rewarded by Government. The anger of the people increased, and in the riots which ensued in various parts of England the point immediately at issue was complicated with other social questions, many depressed trades taking the opportunity of exhibiting their discontent. The Government which had to deal with this difficulty was the Duke of Grafton's--Chatham immediately upon his recovery had retired from it, and Lord Shelburne had also left it.