So long then as the Earl retained the absolute sovereignty, the States were not even representatives of the sovereign people.

The sovereign people was merged into one English Earl.
The English Earl had retired--indefinitely--to England.

Was the sovereign people to wait for months, or years, before it regained its existence?
And if not, how was it to reassert its vitality?
How but through the agency of the States-General, who--according to Wilkes himself--had been fully empowered by the Provinces and Cities to confer the government on the Earl?
The people then, after all, were the provinces and cities.

And the States-General were at that moment as much qualified to represent those provinces and cities as they ever had been, and they claimed no more.

Wilkes, nor any other of the Leicester party, ever hinted at a general assembly of the people.