the justice a mere case of common law. The offenders, Ayliffe and Biggs the rioter, were then examined. The latter proved to be a tool of Wilkes, under direction not to answer; yet from ignorance he was brought to answer enough that was censurable. Ayliffe, though far more artful, prevaricated so shamefully, that it was moved to commit him to Newgate. The Chancellor tried to explain that the case did not relate to the Lords, and proposed only to reprimand Ayliffe; but the Duke of Grafton firmly resisting, and the Chancellor dividing the House, had only four other lords of his opinion,--Lord Lyttelton, Lord Rockingham, Lord Abingdon, and Lord Milton, against fifty-one; so Ayliffe was committed to prison, and Biggs, as a low creature, reprimanded; which reprimand was pronounced by the Chancellor, with this mark, “As the Lords have _now_ declared this a breach of privilege,” &c. Lord Temple was not present, though it had been expected that the demand for the three lords would be discussed; but instead of showing any desire to obey the summons of Wilkes, he declared he should go into the country till after Christmas. This was regarded as an intimation that he had no longer any connection with Wilkes. When the House of Commons sent to make the demand, the Lords replied they would send an answer by their own messengers; and though the demand was made on the first of December, they put off the consideration to the fifth. At the same time the ministerial party in the Commons, on pretence that Carteret Webbe wanted more time, and that Jenkinson was ill in his bed, put off the appearance of Wilkes to the twelfth. On that the Lords determined to adjourn their committee on that business _sine die_, and to send no answer, having found no precedent on the journals for sending the three lords. On the contrary, usage bore that Wilkes should have applied first to the three lords themselves, who might have gone voluntarily before the Commons, as the Earls of Westmoreland and Morton had done in the last reign--or if the three lords had refused to appear, the Commons then might have sent to demand them, which probably would have been refused. When Lord Somers had appeared before the Commons, and an extravagant question had been put to him, he said he hoped nobody thought him absurd enough to answer such a question, put on his hat and walked out. Lord Sandwich told the Lords that as an individual he was ready to appear before the other House, but desired their Lordships to consider that he had been Secretary of State in the heat of Wilkes’s affair, and that he should not answer to any improper question. Sir Joseph Mawbey[153] moved to have the Lords requested to send the three lords on the day appointed for Wilkes’s appearance; but this was rejected. The next day (the 6th) he moved to demand the three lords that they might give an account of what they knew of a subornation of perjury procured by public money, meaning