Endorsing one bill for religious tolerance, he declared, "I wish to see rising in the neighborhood of a Christian cathedral, near its Gothic towers, the minaret of a Turkish mosque, a Chinese pagoda, and a Jewish synagogue, with a temple of the sun, if any Persians could be found to inhabit this island and worship in this gloomy climate the God of their idolatry." At the time, as Cash writes, "Jews had no religious rights at all" and "it was specifically against the law to hold a Roman Catholic mass, and a Catholic who took in pupils or opened a school could be imprisoned for life."
Wilkes' stand for religious liberty led to an interesting role reversal: When anti-Catholic riots erupted in London and throughout the country, Wilkes was on the side of the militia called out to quell the unrest. As a city official, he even led some of them against the rioters. To the disappointment of some of his followers, he also decried the French Revolution late in his life: He thought monarchy a more humane form of government than republicanism.
Benjamin Franklin, who disliked Wilkes, believed that "had the King had a bad character and Wilkes a good one, the latter might have turned the former out of his kingdom." Wilkes, with his squinty eyes and protruding jaw, was hardly a pleasing sight, and the whiff of blasphemy and scandal that always accompanied him did not sit well with all of his supporters. But his commitment to liberty, especially for the lower classes, earned him a place of honor in the hearts of many of his countrymen. Even George III came to appreciate Wilkes, if not exactly to approve of his politics. Arthur Cash's appealing prose and mordant humor—along with his painstaking scholarship—do justice to his subject, which is about as high a commendation as anyone might ask.
Editor's Note: We invite comments and request that they be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of Reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason at any time.
nfl jerseys|11.7.10 @ 8:20PM|#
bnder