[From Home Office File HO 98/69 ]

Wilks to Hobhouse re the House of Keys - 29th Dec 1818

Bath 29th Decr 1818

Sir

I was prevent by severe indisposition from offering at the proper time any acknowledgements to Lord Sidmouth and to you for your obliging letter dated the 4th Decr.

Some of the causes of the slowness with which the house of keys have proceeded would be most conveniently explained in a personal communication, but the principal source of delay may be readily explained. In consequence of the ruinous state of the builiding in which they formerly assembled, the keys have lately held their meetings in a bad room of a bad inn not more than sufficient to contain their own numbers and from which the public has necessarily been excluded. To discuss and to pass bills in secret would be a fair subject of complaint for the community to be affected by them, and of animadversion for those formerly cavilled [at] imaginary exclusion of the public: the proposition therefore for printing the pending bills to meet these objections will I think appear to Lord Sidmouth too reasonable to have been successfully resisted. I trust that his Lordship will have the goodness to promote the small grant solicted for rebuilding the house, an object which would remove many of the present disadvantages.

Although the office of Water Bailiff [is] nearly without functions, and in two cases out of three since the revestment had been held by officers of the Revenue, it is impossible to hesitate at [an] unqualified concurrence in the principle on which Lord Sidmouth has decided against the appointment to a judicial office of a person not bred to the law. I hail its present application as the precursor of one [more] important. I feel the more sensibly his Lordship's delicacy in explaining it to me, because my letter [to] his Lordship had the single purpose of removing inferences represented to arise from my silence. I am anxious that the performance of an act [of] common justice should not appear to Lord Sidmouth to be a deviation from the rule which I have prescribed to myself in the communications which I have the honour of being permitted to make to his Lordship.

I have the honour &c M Wilks

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