The History and Rationale of the Fourth Amendment (Part 3)
John Wilkes became the symbol of one's right to privacy despite political dissent against the government in America.
The Hunt Begins
The Wilkes Case became such a scandal in Great Britain that his story became well-known even in the American colonies before US Independence.
On April 23, 1763 John Wilkes published a newsletter in The North Briton. In it Wilkes called the secretaries of state as “wretched” puppets of Lord Bute. He also called them the “foul dregs of his power and the tools of corruption and despotism”. Wilkes next went as far as to criticize the king of Britain.
Wilkes originally published these newsletter anonymously to protect his privacy.
Unsurprisingly the British government launched a search against the offending writer. All the hunters knew were the printer’s name. The worst part of this story: the hunters were allowed to search, seize, and arrest whoever they wished! By April 29 the hunters learned John Wilkes, a suspected author of the North Briton series had been seen entering Leach’s shop. But at the time the hunters did not believe it was Wilkes.
The hunters first targeted the printer of Wilkes’s newsletter: Dryden Leach. The hunters literally barged into his house in the middle of the night, dragged him out of bed in front of his wife, seized all of his personal papers, and arrested fourteen journeyman and servants. Leach was held in custody for four days.
The hunters next tried George Kearsley: the only suspect the general warrant named. Kearsley arrived his book shop and found the king’s messengers waiting for him. James Watson, one of the hunters, reminded a terrified Kearsley that the hunters had the right to arrest him, his family, and seize any of his belongings. Watson next searched every bureau and drawer in his house, stole his account books, letters, and notes at will, and examined private objects including his money and even his wife’s clothes. The hunters even arrested so many of Kearsley’s employees, including his own father, that Kearsley had to entrust his business to an errand boy.
Kearsley was so horrified from the event that he revealed who the printer of The North Briton is: Richard Balfe. Balfe thus became the next victim to receive the same treatment.
Both Balfe and Kearsley revealed John Wilkes aas one of the authors of the North Briton. So when the authorities arrived to Wilkes’s residence Wilkes pretended to be innocent. Wilkes next foolishly threatened Watson with death, and declared the hunters’ warrant as “illegal” and “void in itself”. Unlike the first two discussed Wilkes succeeded in resisting the dozen hunters that invaded his home.
The hunters dragged Wilkes to the secretaries of state. There, Wilkes bragged that if the midnight search took place he would have killed the first intruder.
With Wilkes out of the way the messengers next spent eighteen hours searching his home. Literally every last nook and cranny was investigated. Locked compartments were broken with the assistance of a blacksmith. The aftermath of the search was a mess: twenty broken doors, ransacked trunks, and hundreds of broken locks. Thousands of books, charts, and manuscripts were dumped on the floors. Even Wilkes’s will, pocket book, and medicine.
It only took thirty hours since the issuing of the general warrant for at least five houses to be searched and forty-nine people to be arrested. The worst part was nearly all of them were innocent.
Wilkes Sues for Damages
Unsurprisingly John Wilkes and nearly everyone else that were victims of the search and seizures sued for property damage and trespassing. Many of the defendants won financial settlements for damages.
The jury during the trials felt that general warrants destroyed the liberties of every subject in the kingdom:
To enter a man’s house by virtue of a nameless warrant, in order to procure evi-
dence, is worse than the Spanish Inquisition, a law under which no Englishman
would wish to live an hour; it was a most daring public attack made upon the liberty
of the subject. I thought that the 29th [i.e., present 39th] chapter of Magna Charta . . .
was violated. — Charles Pratt, Chief Justice of the British Court of Common Pleas
What especially moved the jury to agree with Pratt was that one of the hunters, Halifax, began the hunt three days under the general warrant before any information was available to guide the warrant’s execution. The jury thus saw Halifax’s actions as an abuse of power. Pratt declared Halifax and the hunters’ actions as unconstitutional under the Constitution of the United Kingdom. Wilkes was awarded 1000 British pounds for damages.
The British Press Reacts to Wilkes Case Settlement
The British press convinced the public of the righteousness in Pratt’s verdict. In general journalists, pamphleteers, and other intellectuals sided with Wilkes. This public press sentiment of sympathy for Wilkes grew resentment for general warrants and an increased demand to replace them with specific search warrants in Great Britain. The press continued to mention the Wilkes Incident, the trial, and its verdict for the rest of the 1760s.
What is unique of this coverage is that the press reported an exceptional level of detail of the judicial rhetoric and names of the counsels and jurors involved. The press presented Wilkes as a symbol of liberty and justice for all. The London Chronicle said Wilkes’s lawsuits made Wilkes a figure of “the liberty, property, domestic quiet, and security of every Englishman”.
Newspapers in the British Isles said Wilkes vs Wood is a “cause that, in the highest degree, affected the most sacred and involable rights and liberties of Englishmen”. In summary they concluded:
every Englishman has the satisfaction of seeing that his house is his castle, and is
not liable to be searched, nor his papers pried into, by the malignant curiosity of
King’s messengers, and an utter end is put to this unconstitutional practice. — quote from numerous British newspapers including The London Evening Post, Felix Farley’s Bristol Jnl, and Scots Magazine
Just like the judges in the Wilkes trial the press broadcasted every aspect of search and seizure that secretarial warrants concerned. Released on May 6, 1763, Wilkes publicly announced his house had been “ransacked and plundered”, that all his writings stolen, and his “private and secret concerns” divulged.
Newspapers led opposition to dissidents of Wilkes. The London Magazine said general warrants went against the spirit of English laws and the Constitution.
Although polls did not exist there was little doubt the general public was disgusted with general warrants.
By 1769 the press helped convince the public that general warrants must be illegal.
In the next blog post I will explain how the British public began taking action to issue against general warrants to guarantee only specific search warrants were legal.