On the other side, Wilkes declared his intention of standing for Sheriff of Middlesex the following year, and applied to Alderman Oliver to join him in that pursuit. Oliver declined the offer, saying that his and Wilkes’s principles did not agree; and added that himself and his brother had contributed a tenth of the subscriptions for the payment of Wilkes’s debts, which he thought sufficient, and as the expense of the Shrievalty was a burthen in common between both Sheriffs, he would not subject himself to pay what Wilkes could not pay. This was a new blow on the latter, and not balanced by a gleam of applause paid to his imprisoned Lord Mayor. The Burgesses of Newcastle addressed him, and Bedford complimented him with the freedom of their town. Worcester, Stafford, Caermarthen, Pembroke, and Cardigan, addressed both him and Alderman Oliver. The Lord Mayor was carried by _habeas corpus_ to the Court of Common Pleas, but was remanded, the Chief Justice, De Grey, declaring that the House of Commons had authority over their own members. Alderman Oliver was, at the end of the same month, carried in like manner before the Barons of the Exchequer, who remanded him for the same reason. The reverse of fortune was falling on the Parliaments of France, where their resistance on one hand, and the bold despotism of the Chancellor Maupeou on the other, had brought things to extremities. Maréchal Richelieu in the King’s name dissolved the Cour des Aides; fifty _mousquetaires_ had been sent to the members of that court with _lettres de cachet_, ordering them to be assembled in their court by seven o’clock the next morning, with injunctions not to debate or protest, but to await in silence his Majesty’s commands. Ordinarily, the princes of the blood were charged with those commands; but forms were not observed when fundamentals were annihilated. Richelieu was selected, and arriving, would have placed himself in the seat of the First President, but the members opposed, and said none but princes of the blood had a right to that place. He insisted; they declared they would withdraw; he gave it up and took a lower seat. A counsellor who had accompanied the Maréchal then harangued on the King’s power, and on what did not appear quite so self-evident--on the King’s goodness; and then read an edict suppressing that council, become useless, he said, by the new establishment of six superior councils. This was palliated by a declaration that the King did not propose to lay aside men of their merit; on the contrary, he invited them to enter into his new Parliament. The Advocate-General replied to this fine harangue, urging that none of his brethren could take a part in a Parliament that must always be illegal, as he proved by the laws and constitutions of the kingdom. The Maréchal, then rising, ordered the members to retire, which they refused to do; he threatened to force their obedience. They replied, it was not their profession to fight, that they must submit