The first Parliament after the Union with Ireland met January 22, 1801, and was marked by the reappearance of Fox and the election of Horne Tooke for the borough of Old Sarum through the influence of Lord Camelford. The return of one who had been in holy orders involved a great constitutional question; his admission was opposed on the ground of his clerical profession, and it led to a bill making clergymen incapable of sitting in parliament. Tooke occupied his seat until the next dissolution, which occurred the year following, when he was no longer eligible. The circumstances are commemorated in a caricature by Gillray, entitled, “Political Amusements for Young Gentlemen, or the Brentford Shuttlecock between Old Sarum and the Temple of St. Stephen’s,” March, 1801. Lord Temple led the opposition to Tooke’s admission, and he is represented as resisting his entrance to the House, within which Fox is pictured crying, “The Church for Ever!” Lord Camelford, who was in the navy, is batting the shuttlecock from Old Sarum (the electors depicted as swine at a trough) to the Commons; he cries, “There’s a stroke for you, messmate; and if you kick him back, I’ll return him again, if I should be sent on a cruise to Moorfields for it! Go it, Coz.” Lord Temple is replying, “Send him back? Yes, I’ll send him back twenty thousand times, before such a high-flying Jacobin shuttlecock shall perch it here in his Clerical band.” Lord Camelford’s “List of Candidates” includes, besides Tooke, the names of Black Dick (his negro servant), and orator Thelwall, in case his ex-clerical nominee’s election was annulled; but his lordship disclaimed ever having entertained the intention of offering so gross an insult to the House. The inscriptions on the feathers stuck in the head of the noble lord’s plaything, “The Old Brentford Shuttlecock,” are intended to indicate his character. [Illustration: Lord Temple. J. Horne Tooke. Lord Camelford. POLITICAL AMUSEMENTS FOR YOUNG GENTLEMEN, OR THE BRENTFORD SHUTTLECOCK BETWEEN OLD SARUM AND THE TEMPLE OF ST. STEPHEN’S. 1801. BY J. GILLRAY.] [Illustration: THE OLD BRENTFORD SHUTTLECOCK--JOHN HORNE TOOKE RETURNED FOR OLD SARUM. 1801. #/ ]