I dedicate to you a collection of letters, written by one of yourselves, for the common benefit of us all. They would never have grown to this size without your continued encouragement and applause. To me they originally owe nothing but a healthy, sanguine constitution. Under your care they have thriven: to you they are indebted for whatsoever strength or beauty they possess. When kings and ministers are forgotten, when the force and direction of personal satire is no longer understood, and when measures are only felt in their remotest consequences; this book will, I believe, be found to contain principles worthy to be transmitted to posterity. When you leave the unimpaired hereditary freehold to your children, you do but half your duty. Both liberty and property are precarious, unless the possessors have sense and spirit enough to defend them. This is not the language of vanity. If I am a vain man, my gratification lies within a narrow circle. I am the sole depository of my own secret, and it shall perish with me. If an honest, and, I may truly affirm, a laborious zeal for the public service, has given me any weight in your esteem, let me exhort and conjure you, never to suffer an invasion of your political constitution, however minute the instance may appear, to pass by, without a determined persevering resistance. One precedent creates another. They soon accumulate, and constitute law. What yesterday was fact, to-day is doctrine. Examples are supposed to justify the most dangerous measures; and where they do not suit exactly, the defect is supplied by analogy. Be assured, that the laws, which protect us in our civil rights, grow out of the constitution, and they must fall or flourish with it. This is not the cause of faction, or of party, or of any individual, but the common interest of every man in Britain. Although the king should continue to support his present system of Government, the period is not very distant at which you will have the means of redress in your own power; it may be nearer, perhaps, than any of us expect; and I would warn you to be prepared for it. The king may possibly be advised to dissolve the present parliament a year or two before it expires of course, and precipitate a new election, in hopes of taking the nation by surprise. If such a measure be in agitation. this very caution may defeat or prevent it.

I can not doubt that you will unanimously assert the freedom of election, and vindicate your exclusive right to choose your representatives. But other questions have been started, on which your determination should be equally clear and unanimous. Let it be impressed upon your minds, let it be instilled into your children, that the liberty of the press is the palladium of all the civil, political, and religious rights of an Englishman; and that the right of juries to return a general verdict, in all cases whatsoever, is an essential part of our constitution, not to be controlled or limited by the judges, nor in any shape questionable by the legislature. The power of king, lords, and commons, is not an arbitrary power:* they are the trustees, not the owners, of the estate. The fee-simple is in us: they cannot alienate, they cannot waste. When we say that the legislature is supreme, we mean, that it is the highest power known to the constitution; that it is the highest, in comparison with the other subordinate powers, established by the laws. In this sense, the word supreme is relative, not absolute. The power of the legislature is limited, not only by the general rules or natural justice, and the wel fare of the community, but by the forms and principles of our particular constitution. If this doctrine be not true, we must admit that kings, lords, and commons, have no rule to direct their resolutions, but merely their own will and pleasure: they might unite the legislative and executive power in the same hands, and dissolve the constitution by an act of parliament. But I am persuaded you will not leave it to the choice of seven hundred persons, notoriously corrupted by the crown, whether seven millions of their equals shall be free men

or slaves. The certainty of forfeiting their own rights, when they sacrifice those of the nation, is no check to a brutal, degenerate mind. Without insisting upon the extravagant concession made to Harry the Eighth, there are instances, in the history of other countries, of a formal, deliberate surrender of the public liberty into the hands of the sovereign. If England does not share the same fate, it is because we have better resources than in the virtue of either house of parliament.

I said, that the liberty of the press is the palladium of your rights, and that the right of the juries to return & general verdict, is part of your constitution. To preserve the whole system, you must correct your legíslature. With regard to any influence of the constituent over the conduct of the representative, there is little difference between a scat in parliament for seven years and a seat for life. The prospect of your resentment is too remote; and, although the last session of a septennial parliament be usually employed in courting the favor of the people; consider, that at this rate, your representatives have six years for offense, and but one for atonement. A death-bed repentance seldom reaches to restitution. If you reflect, that in the changes of administration which have marked and disgraced the present reign, although your warmest patriots have, in their turn, been invested with the lawful and unlawful authority of the crown, and though other reliefs or improvements have been held forth to the people, yet that no one man in office has ever promoted or encouraged a bill for shortening the duration of parliaments, but that (whoever was minister) the opposition to this measure, ever since the septennial act passed, has been constant and uniform on the part of government-you cannot but conclude, without the possibility of a doubt, that long parliaments are the foundation of the undue influence of the crown. This influence answers every purpose of arbitrary power to the crown, with an expense and oppression to the people, which would be unnecessary in an arbitrary government. The best of oureministers find it the easiest and most compendious mode of conducting the king's affairs; and all ministers have a general interest in adhering to a system, which, of itself, is sufficient to support them in office, without any assistance from personal virtue, popularity, labor, abilities, or experience. It promises every gratification to avarice and ambition, and secures impunity. These are truths unquestionable; if they make no impression, it is because they are too vulgar and notorious. But the inattention or indifference of the nation has continued too long. You are roused at last to a sense of your danger: the remedy will soon be in your power. If Junius lives, you shall often be reminded of it. If, when the opportunity presents itself, you neglect to do your duty to yourselves and to posterity, to God and to your country, I shall have one consolation left, in common with the meanest and basest of mankind: Civil liberty may still last the life of JUNIUS.

* The positive denial of an arbitrary power being vested in the legislature, is not, in fact, a new doctrine. When the carl of Lindsay, in the year 1675, brought in a bill into the house of lords," To prevent the dangers which might arise from persons disaffected to government," by which an oath and penalty was to be imposed upon the members of both houses; it was affirmed, in a protest, signed by twenty-three lay peers, (my lords the bishops were not accustomed to protest,) That the privilege of sitting and voting in parliament was an honor they had by birth, and a right so inherent in them, and inseparable from them, that nothing could take it away, but what, by the law of the land, must withal take away their lives, and corrupt their blood." These noble peers, whose names are a reproach to their posterity, have, in this instance, solemnly denied the power of parliament to alter the constitution. Under a particular proposition, they have asserted a general truth, in which every man in England is concerned.

The encouragement given to a multitude of spurious, mangled publications of the "Letters of Junius," persuades me, that a complete edition, corrected and improved by the author, will be favorably received. The printer will readily acquit me of any view to my own profit. I undertake this troublesome task merely to serve a man who has deserved well of me and of the public; and who, on my account, has been exposed to an expensive, tyrannical prosecution. For these reasons, I give to Mr. Henry Sampson Woodfall, and to him alone, my right, interest, and property, in these letters, as fully and completely, to all intents and purposes, as an author can possibly convey his property in his own works to another. This edition contains all the letters of Junius, Philo Junius, and of Sir William Draper and Mr. Horne to Junius, with their respective dates, and according to the order in which they appeared in the Public Advertiser The auxiliary part of Philo Junius was indispensably necessary to defend or explain particular passages in Junius, in answer to plausible objections; but the subordinate character is never guilty of the indecorum of praising his principal. The fraud was innocent, and I always intended to explain it The notes will be found not only useful but necessary References to facts not generally known or allusions to the current report or opinion of the day, are, in a little time, unintelligible: yet the reader will not find himself overloaded with explanations: I was not born to be a commentator, even upon my own works It remains to say a few words upon the liberty of the press. The daring spirit by which these letters are supposed to be distinguished, seems to require that something serious should be said in their defense. I am no lawyer by profession, nor do I pretend to be more deeply read than every English gentleman should be, in the laws of his country. If, therefore, the principles I maintain are truly constitutional, I shall not think myself answered, though I should be convicted of a mistake in terms, or misapplying the language of the law. I speak to the plain understanding of the people, and appeal to their honest, liberal construction of me.

Good men, to whom alone I address myself, appear to me to consult their piety as little as their judgment and experience, when they admit the great and essential advantages accruing to society from the freedom of the press, yet indulge themselves in peevish or passionate exclamations against the abuses of it Betraying an unreasonable expectation of benefits, pure and entire from any human institution, they, in effect, arraign the goodness of Providence, and confess that they are dissatisfied with the common lot of humanity. In the present instance, they really create to their own minds, or greatly exaggerate the evil they complain of The laws of England provide as effectually as any human laws can do for the protection of the subject, in his reputation, as well as in his person and property. If the characters of private men are insulted or injured, a double remedy is opened to them by action and indictment: if, through indolence, false shame, or indifference, they will not appeal to the laws of their country, they fail in their duty to society, and are unjust to themselves: if, from an unwarrantable distrust of the integrity of juries, they would wish to obtain justice by any mode of proceeding more summary than a trial by their peers, I do not scruple to affirm, that they are in effect, greater enemies to themselves than to the libeller they prosecute.

of a most ingenius foreigner) both minister and magistrate are compelled in almost every instance to choose between his duty and his reputation. A dilemma of this kind perpetually before him, will not, indeed, work a miracle on his heart, but it will assuredly operate, in some degree, upon his conduct. At all events, these are not times to admit of any relaxation in the little discipline we have left.

But it is alleged, that the licentiousness of the press is carried beyond all bounds of decency and truth; that our excellent ministers are continually exposed to the public hatred or derision; that in prosecutions for libels of government, juries are partial to the popular side: and that in the most flagrant cases, a verdict cannot be obtained for the king. If the premises were admitted, I should deny the conclusion. It is not true that the temper of the times has in general an undue influence over the conduct of juries: on the contrary, many signal instances may be produced of verdicts returned for the king, when the inclinations of the people led strongly to an undis tinguished opposition to government. Witness the cases of Mr Wilkes and Mr. Almon. In the late prosecution of the printers of my address to a great personage, the juries were never fairly dealt with. Lord chief justice Mansfield, conscious that the paper in question contained no treasonable or libellous matter, and that the severest parts of it, however painful to the king or offensive to his servants, were strictly true, would fain have restricted the jury to the finding of special facts, which, as to guilty or not guilty, were merely indifferent. This particular motive, combined with his general purpose to contract the power of juries, will account for the charge he delivered in Woodfall's trial. He told the jury in so many words, that they had nothing to determine, except the fact of printing and publishing, and whether or no the blanks or inuendoes were properly filled up in the information; but that, whether the defendant had committed a crime or not, was no matter of consideration to twelve men, who yet, upon their oaths, were to pronounce their peer guilty or not guilty. When we hear such nonsense delivered from the bench, and find it supported by a labored train of sophistry, which a plain understanding is unable to follow, and which an unlearned jury, however it may shock their reason, cannot be supposed qualified to refute, can it be wondered that they should return a verdict perplexed, absurd, or imperfect? Lord Mansfield has not yet explained to the world, why he accepted of a verdict which the court afterwards set aside as illegal; and which, as it took no notice of the inuendoes, did not even correspond with his own charge. If he had known his own duty, he should have sent the jury back. I speak advisedly, and am well assured, that no lawyer of character, in Westminster-hall, will contradict me. To show the falsehood of lord Mansfield's doctrine, it is not necessary to enter into the merits of the paper which produced the trial. If every line of it were treason, his charge to the jury would still be false, absurd, illegal, and unconstitutional. If I stated the merits of my letter to the king, I should imitate lord Mansfield, and travel* out of the record. When law and reason speak plainly, we do not want authority to direct our understandings. Yet, for the honor of the profession, I am content to oppose one lawyer to another; especially when it happens that the king's attorney-general has virtually disclaimed the doctrine by which the chief justice meant to ensure success to the prosecution. The opinion of the plaintiff's counsel (however it may otherwise be insignifi cant) is weighty in the scale of the defendant. My lord

argued before the court of king's bench. The noble judge, when he delivered the opinion of the court upon the verdict, went regularly through the whole of the proceedings at Nisi Prius, as well the evidence that had been