In 1763, the legality of what were called general warrants, not directed against persons by name specifically, but generally against any person or persons supposed to be guilty of a certain act, was mooted, in consequence of a secretary of state’s warrant to apprehend the “authors, printers and publishers” of the celebrated No. 45 of the ‘North Briton.’ Wilkes, being apprehended by virtue of this warrant, was discharged by Pratt, afterwards Lord Camden, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, when brought up before that court by writ of _habeas corpus_. The question came before Lord Mansfield in a different form. An action of trespass was brought in the court of Common Pleas against the messengers who executed the warrant, and a verdict was given for the plaintiff. A bill of exceptions against Chief Justice Pratt’s directions to the jury was tendered, in pursuance of which the question was again argued before Lord Mansfield, who coincided with his brother chief in holding the instrument illegal under which the defendants had acted. Since this decision, general warrants have been disused. In 1768, Wilkes, then at the height of his popularity, returned to England, and applied for a reversal of his outlawry. The excitement of his partisans broke out both in riots and in indecent attempts to intimidate the judges before whom the point was to be argued. Lord Mansfield pronounced for the reversal upon the ground of a technical informality, which the Court held fatal to the process; but in his elaborate judgment he took care strongly to censure the seditious efforts which had been made to influence the court, and to impress on his auditors that the apparently trifling objection on which the judgment turned was fatal in law, and could not have been passed over in any other case. This speech has been much admired; nor is it easy to overrate its beauties as a composition: it lies open, however, to the objection of being too theatrical. After overruling the objections made by the defendant’s counsel, it rises into eloquent declamation against the attacks of the press, and the threats of the mob; and, at the moment when all seems ripe for a contrary decision, proceeds to grant the thing so loudly clamoured for. He may safely contemn danger who does not expose himself to it; and it would on this occasion have been more dignified to make less parade of independence.