We sat all Monday hearing evidence against Mr. Wood,[1] that dirty wretch Webb, and the messengers, for their illegal proceedings against Mr. Wilkes.  At midnight, Mr. Grenville offered us to adjourn or proceed.  Mr. Pitt humbly begged not to eat or sleep till so great a point should be decided.  On a division, in which though many said aye to adjourning, nobody would go out for fear of losing their seats, it was carried by 379 to 31, for proceeding—­and then—­half the House went away.  The ministers representing the indecency of this, and Fitzherbert saying that many were within call, Stanley observed, that after voting against adjournment, a third part had adjourned themselves, when, instead of being within call, they ought to have been within hearing; this was unanswerable, and we adjourned.

[Footnote 1:  Mr. Wood and Mr. Webb were the Under-Secretary of State and the Solicitor of the Treasury; and, as such, the officers chiefly responsible for the form of the warrant complained of.]

Yesterday we fell to again.  It was one in the morning before the evidence was closed.  Carrington, the messenger, was alone examined for seven hours.  This old man, the cleverest of all ministerial terriers, was pleased with recounting his achievements, yet perfectly guarded and betraying nothing.  However, the arcana imperii have been wofully laid open.

I have heard Garrick, and other players, give themselves airs of fatigue after a long part—­think of the Speaker, nay, think of the clerks taking most correct minutes for sixteen hours, and reading them over to every witness; and then let me hear of fatigue!  Do you know, not only my Lord Temple,[1]—­who you may swear never budged as spectator,—­but old Will Chetwynd, now past eighty, and who had walked to the House, did not stir a single moment out of his place, from three in the afternoon till the division at seven in the morning.  Nay, we had patriotesses, too, who stayed out the whole:  Lady Rockingham and Lady Sondes the first day; both again the second day, with Miss Mary Pelham, Mrs. Fitzroy, and the Duchess of Richmond, as patriot as any of us.  Lady Mary Coke, Mrs. George Pitt, and Lady Pembroke, came after the Opera, but I think did not stay above seven or eight hours at most.

[Footnote 1:  Lord Temple was Mr. Pitt’s brother-in-law, a restless and impracticable intriguer.  He had some such especial power of influencing Mr. Pitt—­who, it is supposed, must have been under some pecuniary obligation to him—­that he was able the next year to prevent his accepting the office of Prime Minister when the King pressed it on him.]