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demand for short Parliaments, he zealously supported other proposals for Parliamentary reform ; and in 1784, when he himself brought forward a reform motion, he drew down upon himself the wrath of the younger Pitt for some outspoken criticisms on the changed attitude of that statesman on the popular questions of the day. In first introducing his measure for shortening Parliaments (1771), Alderman Sawbridge said his subject was the duration of Parliament, "of which the people universally complain." He called upon the House to repeal an Act, the reason for passing which no longer existed, and remarked that it was no feather in the cap of the reigning family that it had been supported by a sacrifice of the ancient constitution. As to the old objection that our foreign alliances would be prejudiced by the shifting of ministries, he pleaded that, on the contrary, frequent Parliaments would give us weight abroad, because the sense of the people

would be more surely known. The ministry of the day (Lord North's) did not vouchsafe to notice the motion, and it was defeated by a majority of 51, the "yeas" being 54, and the "noes" 105. The ministry was equally reticent in 1772, when Alderman Sawbridge boldly averred that the King himself had afforded the strongest argument in favour of his bill by his unfavourable answer to the petition of 60,000 electors of England for a dissolution of Parliament. This time the alderman was defeated by 251 to 83. In the following year the then Lord Mayor, Alderman James Townshend, who had been Sawbridge's colleague in the shrievalty, and who sat for Lord Shelburne's borough of Calne, urged his brother alderman to persevere annually with his motions for leave to bring in the bill for short Parliaments. Sheriff Oliver, another of the great city favourites of that day he who was imprisoned in the Tower in connection with the affair of the printers, and

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who ultimately retired from Parliament and from civic office in despair as to the political state of the country-vigorously supported his friend, Alderman Sawbridge. Among the many frequent sentences quoted in this volume regarding short Parliaments, this one of Sheriff Oliver's surely deserves a place :—“I think that human society cannot receive, nor human policy desire, a more lasting and efficacious security than real representatives of the people, assembled in a Parliament short in its duration and session, sovereign in its power of control, but stripped of every attribute of executive government.” Alderman Sawbridge took the advice of his friend, the Lord Mayor of 1773, and regularly every session brought forward his motion, but always with the same discouraging result. Suspicion of the manner in which Parliaments were then elected was shown by his expressed fear in the new Parliament of 1775, that it would be no better than its predecessors, but would "prove

itself the true offspring of its imputed political father the minister." Wilkes, who was now sitting for Middlesex, put the question whether it was right that the constituents should have to wait seven years before having the power to deprive a member of the opportunity of abusing a trust which he might have proved unworthy of at the moment he began to sit in Parliament. In another year, a supporter of Sawbridge spoke of the frequent instructions given him by his constituents "to attempt in this instance a reform of the constitution," and laid it down as a principle that "power could not revert too often to those to whom it belonged; for the more frequent the appeal made to them, the more entire will be their confidence." As will presently be seen, the worthy alderman who so long fought this question was before the end of his career gratified by at least the temporary support of Fox and Pitt; and at one time, when the whole country, through corresponding

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committees and associations, was demanding a reform of the kind he asked, he must have felt

that, futile as immediate efforts

were, he was

Little could

the champion of a winning cause. he have imagined that a hundred years would pass and that even then the Septennial Act, denounced in his days as "a state stratagem, a court trick to rob the people of their rights," would still be unrepealed.

Chatham, on the 1st of May, 1771, declared himself a convert to triennial Parliaments. He had been slow to join those who wished the Septennial Act repealed. The Common Council of London had imagined, from one or two speeches, that he was on the side of the short Parliament men a year before this important declaration was made, and had publicly thanked him for his zealous support of popular rights, and for a "declaration that his endeavours shall hereafter be used that Parliaments may be restored to their original purity by shorten