Politics
The Pitt ministry continued to court him, and he held legal office for the Prince of Wales from 1795 until 1805. Furthermore, in 1804, he obtained the post of Chief Justice of Chester. As part of the Welsh circuit, this post did not debar him from being returned as Member of Parliament for Totnes in December. He was made Solicitor General in February 1805 and knighted; however, he left office in favour of Sir Arthur Piggott after Pitt's death in January 1806.
Hostile to Grenville, he lost his seat at Totnes, but the formation of the second Portland government in 1807 saw him made Attorney General and returned to Parliament for Great Bedwyn. In the 1807 general election, he defeated Lord Henry Petty to become member for Cambridge University. Under the Portland and Perceval ministries, he was noted for his zealous activities against publishers of seditious libels. In the House of Commons, his most significant activity occurred in 1809, during the inquiry into military corruption and the activities of Mary Anne Clarke, mistress of the Duke of York. However, her adroit response to his examination delighted the press, many members of whom had suffered from Gibbs's activities. His caustic tongue did not make him a favorite among the House, and his principles were quite conservative.
Read more about this topic: Vicary Gibbs
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“Our family talked a lot at table, and only two subjects were taboo: politics and personal troubles. The first was sternly avoided because Father ran a nonpartisan daily in a small town, with some success, and did not wish to express his own opinions in public, even when in private.”
—M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992)
“The newspaper reader says: this party is destroying itself through such mistakes. My higher politics says: a party that makes such mistakes is finished—it has lost its instinctive sureness.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The so-called consumer society and the politics of corporate capitalism have created a second nature of man which ties him libidinally and aggressively to the commodity form. The need for possessing, consuming, handling and constantly renewing the gadgets, devices, instruments, engines, offered to and imposed upon the people, for using these wares even at the danger of one’s own destruction, has become a “biological” need.”
—Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979)