On the 13th, the House of Commons entered seriously on the great question of breach of privilege on Wilkes’s complaint, and the first day sat till midnight, four hundred and fifty members being present. Sir William Meredith opened the debate with calling for the three messengers who had executed the warrant, and for Matthew Brown, Wilkes’s servant, who gave an account of what had passed when his master was seized. I shall not recapitulate these examinations, which may be found in the journals of the House; nor what was said by other witnesses. Their depositions lasted till nine at night. Philip Carteret Webbe then made his defence; and it was so scurvy, that he was reduced to plead inadvertence, and his being a servant of the Secretary of State. He even had the front to affirm, that there had been no intention of making Wilkes _close_ prisoner. He then offered to produce his evidence, but, it being late, G. Grenville asked if they would proceed or not? Mr. Pitt said he thought they ought not to stop till they knew whether they still had a Constitution or not? Lord Frederick Campbell, supported by Rose Fuller and General Townshend, moved to adjourn. Thomas Townshend the younger urged that the House had voted the expulsion of a member at four o’clock in the morning--would not they proceed to hear his complaint at eleven at night? Mr. Pitt said it was derogatory from the honour of the House to adjourn. His own first wish had been to crush foreign enemies; now it was to crush domestic. When that was done he should die willingly. The question was then put, but the Ministers not caring to hazard their majority, when the House seemed inclined to proceed, few of their party went out in the division; and thence it was carried by 379 to 31, to go on. The record of the writ of Habeas Corpus, and the returns to it, were then read; but so many of the members had retired after the division, to eating-houses and coffee-houses to refresh themselves, that the Ministers objected that evidence was not fairly heard on their side; and Sir James Lowther moving to adjourn, it was carried without a division a quarter before twelve.