“I chiefly regret, gentlemen, that this confinement deprives me of the honour of thanking you in person, according to my promise; and at present takes from me, in a great degree, the power of being useful to you. The will, however, to do every service to my constituents remains in its full force; and when my sufferings have a period, the first day I regain my liberty shall restore a life of zeal in the cause and interests of the county of Middlesex. “In this prison, in any other, in every place, my ruling passion will be the love of England and our free constitution. For those objects I will make every sacrifice. Under all the oppressions which ministerial rage and revenge can invent, my steady purpose is to concert with you, and other true friends of the country, the most probable means of rooting out the remains of arbitrary power and Star-chamber inquisition, and of improving as well as securing the generous plans of freedom, which were the boast of our ancestors, and I trust will remain the noblest inheritance of our posterity, the only genuine characteristic of Englishmen. “JOHN WILKES. “_King’s Bench Prison, May 5th, 1768._” By this letter it will be seen that Wilkes chiefly appealed to what is best described as clap-trap sensationalism; he continued, however, to be the cause of constant apprehension, the military and other authorities taking every precaution to preserve the peace of the metropolis. While Wilkes was kept a prisoner in the King’s Bench, the authorities made demonstrations of resorting to armed force for the ostensible purpose of preserving the peace of the metropolis, and, taught precaution by the famous “45” demonstration which followed Wilkes’s election for Middlesex, to check further rioting with firmness, which unfortunately degenerated into ferocity.