Not even the combined influence of the Crown and Commons, not even Lord Mansfield's doctrine of the law of libel, could break the power of his vituperation and Wilkes' courage.

Bad men have sometimes been the instruments of noble destiny; and there are few more curious episodes in English history than the result of this alliance between revengeful hate and insolent ambition.
II Yet, in the long run, the real weapon which defeated George was the ideas of Edmund Burke; for he gave to the political conflict its real place in philosophy.

There is no immortality save in ideas; and it was Burke who gave a permanent form to the debate in which he was the liberal protagonist.

His career is illustrative at once of the merits and defects of English politics in the eighteenth century.

The son of an Irish Protestant lawyer and a Catholic mother, he served, after learning what Trinity College, Dublin, could offer him, a long apprenticeship to politics in the upper part of Grub Street.