The repeated expulsion of Wilkes from his seat, by a vote of the House of Commons, had (in 1770) thrown the nation into a ferment. Johnson was roused to take the side of the ministry; and endeavoured in a pamphlet, called the False Alarm, as much by ridicule as by argument, to support a violent and arbitrary measure. It appears, both from his conversation and his writings, that he thought there was a point at which resistance might become justifiable; and, surely it is more advisable to check the encroachments of power at their beginning, than to delay opposition, till it cannot be resorted to without greater hazard to the public safety. The ministry were happily compelled to give way. They were, however, glad to have so powerful an arm to fight their battles, and, in the next year (1771) employed him in a worthier cause. In his tract on the Falkland Islands, the materials for which were furnished him by Government, he appears to have much the better of the argument; for he has to shew the folly of involving the nation in a war for a questionable right, and a possession of doubtful advantage; but his invective against his opponents is very coarse; he does not perform the work of dissection neatly: he mangles rather than cuts. When he applies the word "gabble" to the elocution of Chatham, we are tempted to compare him to one of the baser fowl, spoken of by an ancient poet, that clamour against the bird of Jove. Not many copies of this pamphlet had been dispersed, when Lord North stopped the sale, and caused some alterations to be made, for reasons which the author did not himself distinctly comprehend. Johnson's own opinion of these two political essays was, that there was a subtlety of disquisition in the first, that was worth all the fire of the second. When questioned by Boswell as to the truth of a report that they had obtained for him an addition to his pension of 200_l_. a year, he answered that, excepting what had been paid him by the booksellers, he had not got a farthing for them.