These audacious proceedings had stirred up tremendous excite ment in which for the first time for years the artisans and lower middle class felt acutely their disfranchisement. "One of your supporters has turned his coat," Wilkes was told. "Impossible, not one has a coat to turn," he answered. They avenged them selves by ribting and strikes, by scrawling "45" on every door and forcing the court followers to cheer for "Wilkes and Liberty." More effectively, Serjeant Glynn, his colleague for Middlesex, and after his release Wilkes himself, organized, by the medium of public meetings, support from the electors as far distant as Truro, for a "Wilkite" programme which till about 178o was the standard of a political party. Its chief points were the radical reform of Parliament (to include enfranchisement of the "lower orders" and the suppression of rotten boroughs) and the protec tion of individual liberty against Ministerial or Parliamentary attack. Wilkes also entered into relations, not fully explored yet, with the American malcontents and seems to have acted as an inspirer of their subsequent action and as English represent ative of the Boston "Sons of Liberty." His greatest successes, however, were won in the City of London where he triumphantly fought his way through to the Lord Mayoralty in 1774. As Sheriff and Alderman he had welded the powerful City interests with a single block of opposition to the Court and Ministry, achieving his most remarkable victory in the Wheble case, when the City's judicial powers were successfully used to prevent the arrest of printers who reported the House of Commons debates. After the election of 1774, when the Court no longer found it wise to prevent him taking his seat in Parliament, he had a "tail" of about a dozen M.P.'s. He presented (1776) a bill for the radical reform of Parliament. During the American Revolution Wilkes cham pioned the colonial cause. He delivered, in the House of Com mons, ten set speeches in which he advocated the immediate cessation of hostilities with America. Lord Shelburne, in concert with John Horne (see TOOKE, JOHN HORNE) was able to shake his influence for a short while in the City, but Wilkes more than re covered his position, and in 1779 he was elected Chamberlain of the City, a lucrative office which he filled with absolute scrupulous ness till his death. But the violence of his popularity was necessar ily waning when in 1780 the Gordon riots broke out (see GORDON, LORD GEORGE). Wilkes, despite his turbulence, had never encour aged mob violence, and religious persecution he had always fought. Though all the "lower orders" and even such old allies as Alder man Frederick Bull were deeply implicated in the burning and looting, Wilkes hesitated only a day or two before he practically took matters out of the hands of the complaisant city authorities, secured a draft of troops, and took a prominent part in crushing the disturbance. His own supporters he had to jail—in one case committing his printer Moore for an attack on the house of the judge, Mansfield, who had condemned him.
From this moment, honourable though his motives were, his political career was made impossible. He could no longer drive the rich London merchants and the lower orders in harness to gether. He had broken violently with the latter and with his own principles (for six years before he had replied to Horne, not necessarily insincerely, that he really believed the voice of the people, when he could ascertain it, to be "the voice of God") and the former had therefore less need for his services. Moreover, they and all well-to-do reformers were attracted by the more respectable reform movement started in the previous year by the Yorkshire M.P.'s. This, based on Rockingham's "Oeconomical reform," substituted triennial for annual Parliaments and the addition of ioo M.P.'s to London and the counties for universal suffrage and redistribution of seats; it was rapidly adopted by a dozen or more counties at general meetings of electors.
Wilkes' energies declined as did his popularity. After he had secured (May 3, 1782) the expunging from the Commons of all record of his expulsions he took little part in politics. In 1790 he did not seek re-election, but retired into private life, dying in 1797. Characteristically enough, he was found to be insolvent, but quite unaware of the fact. An obelisk in Ludgate Circus
commemorates him.
Wilkes was above the middle height, exceedingly ugly, with a startling squint that is given all its value in Hogarth's celebrated cartoon, but with a charm of manner and wit which few could resist. Some of his jests have passed into history—as for example his rejoinder to an elector who answered his canvass by saying he would sooner vote for the Devil than Wilkes : "And if your friend is not standing?" To an offer of snuff he answered, "No thank you, I have no small vices." To Sandwich, who told him he would either die on the gallows or of venereal disease, "That depends, my lord, on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress." His character, largely through his own fault, has been subject to exaggerated attacks which may be generally traced to Lord Brougham (see BROUGHAM AND VAUX, LORD) or to Horace Walpole, whom he was unwise enough to offend. His conversation was indecent, he was entirely incapable of continence in regard to women, though temperate in other ways, and like almost every other public man of his century, he was extravagant. His cynical tongue ruined his reputation with the Victorians : he never did a good thing without giving a bad reason. But dishonesty, cruelty, cowardice or hypocrisy were unknown to him; public money passed untouched through his hands when he was "in want of a guinea"; his political principles were honestly and to all appear ances firmly held up till the deadlock of the Gordon riots, de scribed above. He secured the great reforms of the abolition of general warrants, the freeing of the press and freedom of choice for the electors; his non-success in securing Parliamentary reform or justice for America can hardly be counted against him.
BismooRApHy.—Horace Bleackley, John Wilkes (1917, bibl.) ; Wilkes' papers: Brit. Mus. Add. MSS. 3o,865-96 and Guildhall MSS. 212-4 ; the Correspondence of J. Wilkes, ed. by Almon and Rough (1804-5) ; R. W. Postgate, That Devil Wilkes (1929). (R. W. P.) (pronounced Wilkes-Barre), a mining city of north-eastern Pennsylvania, U.S.A., on Federal highway II and the east bank of the Susquehanna river, ioo m. N.N.W. of Philadelphia and 15 m. S.W. of Scranton. It is served by the Central of New Jersey, the Delaware and Hudson, the Lehigh Valley, the Pennsylvania and two electric railways, and by several motor-bus and truck lines. Pop. (192o) 73,833 (2o% foreign-born white) ; 193o Federal census 86,626. Within reach of the city by one car fare is a population of 175,000. The city lies in the Wyom ing valley and is in the heart of the anthracite region. It is a manufacturing and commercial centre of importance. The as sessed valuation for 1927 was $112,926,819. Wilkes-Barre is a compact, substantially built city, with 500 ac. in public parks, large business blocks, wide shaded residential streets, modern school buildings and a large athletic field. The output of Luzerne county in 1926 was 29,872,800 long tons (35% of all the anthracite mined) and its value was more than three times as great as the value of all the gold mined in the country that year. The city has a large trade in coal-mine and railroad supplies. Its manufactures (which include iron and steel, silk goods and other textiles, copper wire, locomotives, electrical goods and many kinds of machinery) were valued in 1927 at Bank debits in 1927 aggregated $586,586,000.
Wilkes-Barre was settled in 1769 by colonists from New Eng land under the leadership of Maj. John Durkee, on a grant from the Susquehanna Land Company of Connecticut. Maj. Durkee gave the town its name, in honour of John Wilkes and Col. Isaac Barre, stout defenders of the American Colonies in parlia ment. Ft. Wilkes-Barre was built in 1776 as a defence against Indian invasion. On July 4, 1778, the day after the Battle of Wyoming, Wilkes-Barre was burned by the Indians and British Rangers; and again in July 1784, during the "Second Pennamite Yankee War," 23 of its 26 buildings were burned. The conflict ing claims of Pennsylvania and Connecticut were finally adjusted (see WYOMING VALLEY) and the titles of the settlers were con firmed by Pennsylvania in a series of statutes passed in 1799, 1802 and 1807. Wilkes-Barre was incorporated as a borough in 1818 and was chartered as a city in 1871.