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terest, and even of personal enmity, in a quarter where no such interest or enmity can be supposed to exist, without the highest injustice, and the highest dishonor? On the other hand, by what judicious management have you contrived it, that the only act of mercy to which you ever advised your sovereign, far from adding to the lustre of a character truly gracious and benevolent, should be received with universal disapprobation and disgust? I shall consider it as a ministerial measure, because it is an odious one, and as your measure, my lord duke, because you are the minister.

this? You are perpetually complaining of the riotous disposition of the lower class of people; yet when the laws have given you the means of making an example, in every sense unexceptionable, and by far the most likely to awe the multitude, you pardon the offense, and are not ashamed to give the sanction of government to the riots you complain of, and even to future murders. You are partial, perhaps, to the military mode of execution; and had rather see a a score of these wretches butchered, by the guards, than one of them suffer death by regular course of law. How does it happen, my lord, that, in your hands, even the mercy of the prerogative is cruelty and oppression to the subject?

The measure, it seems, was so extraordinary, that you thought it necessary to give some reasons for it to the public. Let them be fairly examined.

evidence would either not benefit, or might be prejudicial, to the prisoner. Otherwise, is it conceivable that his counsel should neglect to call in such material evidence?

As long as the trial of this chairman was depending, it was natural enough that government should give him every possible encouragement and support. The honorable service for which he was hired, and the spirit with which he performed it, made common cause between your grace and him. The minister, 1. You say, that Messrs. Broomfield and Starling who, by secret corruption, invades the freedom of were not examined at M'Quirk's trial. I will tell your elections, and the ruffian, who, by open violence de- grace why they were not. They must have been exstroys that freedom, are embarked in the same bot-amined upon oath; and it was foreseen, that their tom; they have the same interests, and mutually feel for each other. To do justice to your grace's humanity, you felt for M'Quirk as you ought to do; and if you had been contented to assist him indirectly, without a notorious denial of justice, or openly insulting the sense of the nation, you might have satisfied every duty of political friendship, without committing the honor of your sovereign, or hazarding the reputation of his government. But when this unhappy man had been solemnly tried, convicted, and condemned; when it appeared that he had been frequently employed in the same services, and that no excuse for him could be drawn either from the innocence of his former life, or the simplicity of his character; was it not hazarding too much, to interpose the strength of the prerogative between this felon and the justice of his country?* You ought to have known that an example of this sort was never so necessary as at present; and certainly you must have known, that the lot could not have fallen upon a more guilty object. What system of government is • Whitehall, March 11, 1769. His majesty has been graciously pleased to extend his royal mercy to Edward M'Quirk, found guilty of the murder of George Clarke, as appears by his royal warrant, to the tenor following: GEORGE R.

Whereas a doubt has arisen in our royal breast concerning the evidence of the death of George Clarke, from the representations of William Broomfield, esq., surgeon, and Solomon Starling, apothecary: both of whom, as has been represented to us, attended the deceased before his death, and expressed their opinions that he did not die of the blow he received at Brentford: and whereas it appears to us that neither of the said persons were produced as witnesses upon the trial, though the said Solomon Starling had been examined before the coroner; and the only person called to prove that the death of the said George Clarke was occasioned by the said blow, was John Foot, surgeon, who never saw the deceased till after his death: we thought fit thereupon to refer the said representations, together with the report of the recorder of our city of London of the evidence given by Richard and William Beale and the said John Foot, on the trial of Edward Quirk, otherwise called Edward Kirk, otherwise called Edward M'Quirk, for the murder of the said Clarke, to the master, wardens, and the rest of the court of examiners of the surgeons' company, commanding them likewise to take such farther examination of the said persons, so representing, and of said John Foot, as they might think necessary, together with the premises above-mentioned, to form and report to us their opinion, Whether it did or did not appear to them that the said George Clarke died in consequence of the blow he received in the riot at Brentford on the 8th of December last" And the said court of examiners of the surgeons' company having thereupon reported to us their opinion, "That it did not appear to them that he did:" we have thought proper to extend our royal mercy to him the said Edward Quirk, otherwise Edward Kirk, otherwise called Edward M'Quirk, and to grant him our free pardon for the murder of the said George Clarke, of which he has been found guilty. Our will and pleasure, therefore, is, That the said Edward Quirk, otherwise called Edward

2. You say, that Mr. Foot did not see the deceased until after his death. A surgeon, my lord, must know very little of his profession, if, upon examining a wound or a contusion, he cannot determine whether it was mortal or not. While the party is alive, a surgeon will be cautious of pronouncing; whereas, by the death of the patient, he is enabled to consider both cause and effect in one view, and to speak with a certainty confirmed by experience.

3. Yet we are to thank your grace for the establishment of a new tribunal. Your inquisito post mortem, is unknown to the laws of England, and does honor to your invention. The only material objection to it is, that if Mr. Foot's evidence was insufficient, because he did not examine the wound till after the death of the party, much less can a negative opinion, given by gentlemen who never saw the body of Mr. Clarke either before or after his decease, authorize you to supercede the verdict of a jury, and the sentence of the law.

Now, my lord, let me ask you, Has it never occurred to your grace, while you were withdrawing this desperate wretch from that justice which the laws had awarded, and which the whole people of England demanded against him, that there is another man, who is the favorite of his country, whose pardon would have been accepted with gratitude, whose pardon would have healed all our divisions? Have you quite forgotten that this man was once your grace's friend? Or, is it to murderers only that you will extend the mercy of the crown?

These are questions you will not answer, nor is it necessary. The character of your private life, and the uniform tenor of your public conduct, is an answer to them all.

JUNIUS.

Kirk, otherwise called Edward M'Quirk, be inserted for the said murder, in our first and next general pardon that shall come out for the poor convicts of Newgate, without any condition whatsoever; and that, in the meantime, you take bail for his appearance, in order to plead our said pardon. And for so doing this shall be your warrant.

Given at our court at St. James's, the tenth day of March, 1769, in the ninth year of our reign. By his majesty's command. ROCHFORD. To our trusty and well-beloved James Eyre, esq., recorder of our city of London, the sheriffs of our said city and county of Middlesex, and all others whom it may concern.

LETTER IX.

TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF GRAFTON.

MY LORD,

April 10, 1769.

tives which should not have been given to the public. I have frequently censured Mr. Wilkes's conduct, yet your advocate reproaches me with having devoted myself to the service of sedition. Your grace can best inform us for which of Mr. Wilkes's good quali ties you first honored him with your friendship, or how long it was before you discovered those bad ones in him, at which, it seems, your delicacy was offended. Remember, my lord, that you continued your connection with Mr. Wilkes, long after he had been con

I have so good an opinion of your grace's discernment, that when the author of the vindication of your conduct assures us that he writes from his own mere motion, without the least authority from your grace, I should be ready enough to believe him, but for one fatal mark, which seems to be fixed upon every measure in which either your personal or poli-victed of those crimes which you have since taken tical character is concerned. Your first attempt to support sir William Proctor ended in the election of Mr. Wilkes; the second insured success to Mr. Glynn. The extraordinary step you took to make sir James Lowther lord paramount of Cumberland has ruined his interest in that country for ever: the house list of directors was cursed with the concurrence of government; and even the miserable Dingley * could not escape the misfortune of your grace's protection. With this uniform experience before us, we are authorized to suspect, that when a pretended vindication of your principles and conduct, in reality, contains the bitterest reflections upon both, it could not have been written without your immediate direction and assistance. The author, indeed, calls God to witness for him, with all the sincerity, and in the very terms of an Irish evidence, to the best of his knowledge and belief. My lord, you should not encourage these appeals to Heaven. The pious prince, from whom you are supposed to descend, made such frequent use of them in his public declarations, that, at last, the people also found it necessary to appeal to Heaven in their turn. Your administration has driven us into circumstances of equal distress: beware, at least, how you remind us of the remedy.

You have already much to answer for. You have provoked this unhappy gentleman to play the fool once more in public life, in spite of his years and infirmities; and to show us, that, as you yourself are a singular instance of youth without spirit, the man who defends you is a no less remarkable example of age without the benefit of experience. To follow such a writer minutely, would, like his own periods, be labor without end. The subject too has been already discussed, and is sufficiently understood. I cannot help observing, however, that when the pardon of M'Quirk was the principal charge against you, it would have been but a decent compliment to your grace's understanding, to have defended you upon your own principles. What credit does a man deserve, who tells us plainly, that the facts set forth in the king's proclamation were not the true motives on which the pardon was granted? and that he wishes that those chirurgical reports, which first gave occasion to certain doubts in the royal breast, had not been laid before his majesty? You see, my lord, that even your friends cannot defend your actions, without changing your principles; nor justify a deliberate measure of government without contradicting the main assertion on which it was founded.

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pains to represent in the blackest colors of blasphemy and treason. How unlucky is it, that the first instance you have given us of a scrupulous regard to decorum, is united with a breach of a moral obliga tion! For my own part, my lord, I am proud to affirm, that if I had been weak enough to form such a friendship, I would never have been base enough to betray it. But let Mr. Wilkes's character be what it may, this, at least is certain; that circumstanced as he is, with regard to the public, even his vices plead for him. The people of England have too much discernment to suffer your grace to take advantage of the failings of a private character, to establish a precedent by which the public liberty is affected, and which you may hereafter, with equal ease and satisfaction, employ to the ruin of the best men in the kingdom. Content yourself, my lord, with the many advantages which the unsullied purity of your own character has given you over your unhappy deserted friend. Avail yourself of all the unforgiving piety of the court you live in, and bless God that “you are not as other men are; extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican." In a heart void of feeling, the laws of honor and good faith may be violated with impunity, and there you may safely indulge your genius. But the laws of England shall not be violated, even by your holy zeal to oppress a sinner; and, though you have succeeded in making him a tool, you shall not make him the victim of your ambition.

SIR,

LETTER X.

TO MR. EDWARD WESTON.

JUNIUS.

April 21, 1769. I said you were an old man without the benefit of experience. It seems you are also volunteer. with the stipend of twenty commissions; and at a period when all prospects are at an end, you are still looking forward to rewards which you cannot enjoy. No man is better acquainted with the bounty of gov ernment than you are;

Ton impudence,

Temeraire vieillard, aura sa recompence. But I will not descend to an altercation either with the impotence of your age, or the peevishness of your diseases. Your pamphlet, ingenious as it is, has been so little read, that the public cannot know how far you have the right to give me the lie, without the following citation of your own words:

Page 6th. 1. That he is persuaded that the motives which he (Mr. Weston) has alleged, must appear fully sufficient with or without the opinions of the surgeons.

2. That those very motives must have been the foundation on which the earl of Rochford thought proper, etc.

3. That he cannot but regret, that the earl of Rochford seems to have thought proper to lay the chirur gical reports before the king, in preference to all the other sufficient motives,' etc.

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Let the public determine whether this be defending government on their principles or your own.

The style and language you have adopted are, I confess, not ill-suited to the elegance of your own manners, or to the dignity of the cause you have undertaken. Every common dauber writes rascal and villain under his pictures, because the pictures themselves have neither character nor resemblance. But the works of a master require no index; his features and coloring are taken from nature; the impression they make is immediate and uniform; nor is it possible to mistake his characters, whether they represent the treachery of a minister, or the abused simplicity of a

LETTER XI.

JUNIUS.

TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF GRAFTON.

MY LORD,

April 24, 1769.

a future house of commons, perhaps less virtuous than the present, every county in England, under the auspices of the treasury, may be represented as completely as the county of Middlesex. Posterity will be indebted to your grace for not contenting yourself with a temporary expedient, but entailing upon them the immediate blessings of your administration. Boroughs were already too much at the mercy of government. Counties could neither be purchased not intimidated. But their solemn determined election may be rejected; and the man they detest may be appointed by another choice to represent them in parliament. Yet it is admitted, that the sheriffs obeyed the laws, and performed their duty.* The return they made must have been legal and valid, or undoubtedly they would have been censured for making it. With every good-natured allowance for your grace's youth and inexperience, there are some things which you cannot but know. You cannot but know, that the right of the freeholders to adhere to The system you seem to have adopted when lord their choice (even supposing it improperly exerted) was as clear and indisputable as that of the house of Chatham unexpectedly left you at the head of affairs, gave us no promise of that uncommon exertion commons to exclude one of their own members. Nor of vigor which has since illustrated your character, is it possible for you not to see the wide distance there and distinguished your administration. Far from is between the negative power of rejecting one man, discovering a spirit bold enough to invade the first and the positive power of appointing another. The rights of the people, and the first principles of the right of expulsion, in the most favorable sense, is no more than the custom of parliament. The right of constitution, you were scrupulous of exercising even those powers with which the executive branch of the election is the very essence of the constitution. To legislature is legally invested. We have not yet for- violate that right, and much more to transfer it to gotten how long Mr. Wilkes was suffered to appear any other set of men, is a step leading immediately at large, nor how long he was at liberty to canvass to the dissolution of all government. So far forth as for the city and county, with all the terrors of an it operates, it constitutes a house of commons which outlawry hanging over him. Our gracious sovereign does not represent the people. A house of commons so formed would involve a contradiction, and the has not yet forgotten the extraordinary care you of his dignity, and of the safety of his person, when, grossest confusion of ideas: but there are some minat a crisis which courtiers affected to call alarming, isters, my lord, whose views can only be answered by you left the metropolis exposed, for two nights to reconciling absurdities, and making the same propogether, to every species of riot and disorder. The sition, which is false and absurd in argument, true security of the royal residence from insult was then in fact. sufficiently provided for in Mr. Conway's firmness, This measure, my lord, is, however, attended with and lord Weymouth's discretion; while the prime minister of Great Britain, in a rural retirement, and one consequence favorable to the people, which I am in the arms of faded beauty, had lost all memory of persuaded you did not foresee. While the contest tion and private character gave you advantages over his sovereign, his country, and himself. In these in- lay between the ministry and Mr. Wilkes, his situastances you might have acted with vigor, for you him, which common candor, if not the memory of would have had the sanction of the laws to support your former friendship, should have forbidden you to you: the friends of government might have defend- make use of. To religious men you had an oppored you without shame; and moderate men, who wish tunity of exaggerating the irregularities of his past well to the peace and good order of society, might life; to moderate men you held forth the pernicious have had a pretence for applauding your conduct. consequences of faction. Men who, with this charBut these, it seems, were not occasions worthy of your acter, looked no farther than to the object before grace's interposition. You reserved the proofs of them, were not dissatisfied at seeing Mr. Wilkes exyour intrepid spirit for trials of greater hazard and cluded from parliament. You have now taken care importance; and now, as if the most disgraceful re-to shift the question; or rather, you have created a laxation of the executive authority had given you a claim of credit to indulge in excesses still more dangerous, you seem determined to compensate amply for your former negligence, and to balance the nonexecution of the laws with a breach of the constitution. From one extreme you suddenly start to the other, without leaving, between the weakness and the fury of the passions, one moment's interval for the firmness of the understanding.

took

These observations, general as they are, might easily be extended into a faithful history of your grace's administration, and perhaps may be the employment of a future hour. But the business of the present moment will not suffer me to look back to a series of events, which cease to be interesting or important, because they are succeeded by a measure so singularly daring, that it excites all our attention, and engrosses all our resentment.

Your patronage of Mr. Luttrell has been crowned with success. With this precedent before you, with the principles on which it was established, and with

new one, in which Mr. Wilkes is no more concerned than any other English gentleman. You have united this country against you on one grand constitutional point, on the decision of which our existence, as a free people, absolutely depends. You have asserted, not in words, but in fact, that the representation in parliament does not depend upon the choice of the freeholders. If such a case can possibly happen once it may happen frequently; it may happen always: and if three hundred votes, by any mode of reasoning whatever, can prevail against twelve hundred, the same reasoning would equally have given Mr. Luttrell his seat with ten votes, or even with one. consequences of this attack upon the constitution are too plain and palpable, not to alarm the dullest

The

*Sir Fletcher Norton, when it was proposed to punish the sheriffs, declared in the house of commons, that they, in returning Mr. Wilkes, had done no more than their duty.

† The reader is desired to mark this prophecy.

apprehension. I trust you will find that the people | me be permitted to consider your character and conof England are neither deficient in spirit or under- duct, merely as a subject of curious speculation. standing; though you have treated them as if they There is something in both which distinguishes you, had neither sense to feel or spirit to resent. We have not only from all other ministers, but all other men. reason to thank God and our ancestors, that there It is not that you do wrong by design, but that you never yet was a minister in this country who could should never do right by mistake. It is not that stand the issue of such a conflict; and, with every your indolence and your activity have been equally prejudice in favor of your intentions, I see no such misapplied, but that the first uniform principle, or, abilities in your grace, as should enable you to suc- if I may call it, the genius of your life, should have ceed in an enterprise, in which the ablest and basest carried you through every possible change and conof your predecessors have found their destruction. tradiction of conduct, without the momentary impuYou may continue to deceive your gracious master tation or color of a virtue; and that the wildest spirwith false representations of the temper and condi- it of inconsistency should never once have betrayed tion of his subjects: you may command a venal vote, you into a wise or honorable action. This, I own, because it is the common established appendage of gives an air of singularity to your fortune, as well as your office: but never hope that the freeholders will to your disposition. Let us look back, together, to a make a tame surrender of their rights; or, that an scene, in which a mind like yours will find nothing English army will join with you in overturning the to repent of. Let us try, my lord, how well you have liberties of their country. They know, that their supported the various relations in which you stood first duty, as citizens, is paramount to all subsequent to your sovereign, your country, your friends, and engagements: nor will they prefer the discipline, or yourself. Give us, if it be possible, some excuse to even the honors of their profession, to those sacred posterity and to ourselves, for submitting to your original rights which belonged to them before they administration. If not the abilities of a great miniswere soldiers, and which they claim and possess as the ter, if not the integrity of a patriot, or the fidelity of birth-right of Englishmen. a friend, show us, at least, the firmness of a man. Return, my lord, before it be too late, to that easy For the sake of your mistress, the lover shall be insipid system which you first set out with. Take spared. I will not lead her into public, as you have back your mistress.* The name of friend may be done; nor will I insult the memory of departed beanfatal to her, for it leads to treachery and persecution. ty. Her sex, which alone made her amiable in your Indulge the people. Attend Newmarket. Mr. Lut-eyes, makes her respectable in mine. trell may agaiu vacate his seat; and Mr. Wilkes, if not persecuted, will soon be forgotten. To be weak and inactive is safer than to be daring and criminal; and wide is the distance between a riot of the populace and a convulsion of the whole kingdom. You may live to make the experiment, but no honest man can wish you should survive it.

LETTER XII.

JUNIUS.

TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF GRAFTON.

MY LORD,

The character of the reputed ancestors of some men has made it possible for their descendants to be vicious in the extreme, without being degenerate. Those of your grace, for instance, left no distressing examples of virtue even to their legitimate posterity: and you may look back with pleasure to an illustrious pedigree, in which heraldry has not left a single good quality upon record to insult or upbraid you. You have better proofs of your descent, my lord, than the register of a marriage, or any troublesome inheritance of reputation. There are some hereditary strokes of character, by which a family may be as clearly distinguished, as by the blackest features of the human face. Charles the First lived and died a hypocrite. Charles the Second was a ap-hypocrite of another sort, and should have died upon the same scaffold. At the distance of a century, we see their different characters happily revived and blended in your grace. Sullen and severe without religion, profligate without gayety, you live like Charles the Second, without being an amiable companion; and, for aught I know, may die as his father did, without the reputation of a martyr.

May 30, 1769.

If the measures in which you have been most successful had been supported by any tolerable pearance of arguments, I should have thought my time not ill employed in continuing to examine your conduct as a minister, and stating it fairly to the public. But when I see questions of the highest national importance carried as they have been, and the first principles of the constitution openly violated, without argument or decency, I confess I give up the cause in despair. The meanest of your predecessors had abili- You had already taken your degrees with credit, ties sufficient to give a color to their measures. If in those schools in which the English nobility are they invaded the rights of the people, they did not formed to virtue, when you were introduced to lord dare to offer a direct insult to their understanding; Chatham's protection.* From Newmarket, White's, and in former times, the most venal parliaments, and the opposition, he gave you to the world with an made it a condition, in their bargain with the minis air of popularity, which young men usually set out ter, that he should furnish them with some plausible with, and seldom preserve: grave and plausible pretences for selling their country and themselves. enough to be thought fit for business; too young for You have had the merit of introducing a more comtreachery; and, in short, a patriot of no unpromising pendious system of government and logic. You neith- expectations. Lord Chatham was the earliest object er address yourself to the passions nor the understand- of your political wonder and attachment; yet you ing, but simply to the touch. You apply yourself deserted him, upon the first hopes that offered of an immediately to the feelings of your friends; who, equal share of power with lord Rockingham. When contrary to the forms of parliament, never enter the late duke of Cumberland's first negotiation failed, heartily into a debate until they have divided. and when the favorite was pushed to the last exRelinquishing, therefore, all idle views of amend-tremity, you saved him, by joining with an adminis ment to your grace, or of benefit to the public, let

The duke, about this time, had separated himself from Anne Parsons; but proposed to continue united with her on some platonic terms of friendship, which she rejected with contempt. His baseness to this woman is beyond description or belief.

tration, in which lord Chatham had refused to engage. Still, however, he was your friend: and you are yet to explain to the world, why you consented to act without him: or why, after uniting with lord

* To understand these passages, the reader is referred to a noted pamphlet, called 'The History of the Minority.'

Rockingham, you deserted and betrayed him. You complained that no measures were taken to satisfy your patron; and that your friend, Mr. Wilkes, who had suffered so much for the party, had been abandoned to his fate. They have since contributed, not a little, to your present plenitude of power; yet, I think, lord Chatham has less reason than ever to be satisfied: and, as for Mr. Wilkes, it is, perhaps, the greatest misfortune of his life, that you should have so many compensations to make in the closet for your former friendship with him. Your gracious master understands your character, and makes you a persecutor because you have been a friend.

Your grace's public conduct, as a minister, is bu the counterpart of your private history; the same inconsistency, the same contradictions. In America we trace you, from the first opposition to the stamp act, on principles of convenience, to Mr. Pitt's surrender of the right; then forward to lord Rockingham's surrender of the fact; then back again to lord Rockingham's declaration of the right; then forward to taxation with Mr. Townshend; and, in the last instance, from the gentle Conway's undetermined discretion, to blood and compulsion with the duke of Bedford: yet, if we may believe the simplicity of lord North's eloquence, at the opening of the next session, you are once more to be the patron of America. Is this the wisdom of a great minister, or is it the ominous vibration of a pendulum? Had you no opinion of your own, my lord? Or was it the gratification of betraying every party with which you have been united, and of deserting every political principle in which you had concurred?

Lord Chatham formed his last administration upon principles which you certainly concurred in, or you could never have been placed at the head of the treasury. By deserting those principles, or by acting in direct contradiction to them, in which he found you were secretly supported in the closet, you soon forced him to leave you to yourself, and to withdraw his name from an administration which had been formed on the credit of it. You had then a prospect of friendships better suited to your genius, and more likely to fix your disposition. Marriage is the point on which every rake is stationary at last: and truly If, instead of disowning lord Shelburne, the British my lord, you may well be weary of the circuit you had interposed with dignity and firmness, you know, have taken; for you have now fairly travelled my lord, that Corsica would never have been invaded. through every sign in the political zodiac, from the The French saw the weakness of a distracted minisscorpion, in which you stung lord Chatham, to the try, and were justified in treating you with conhopes of a virgin in the house of Bloomsbury. tempt. They would probably have yielded, in the One would think that you had had sufficient ex- first instance, rather than hazard a rupture with this perience of the frailty of nuptial engagements, or, at country; but being once engaged, they cannot releast, that such a friendship as the duke of Bedford's treat without dishonor. Common sense foresees conmight have been secured to you by the auspicious sequences which have escaped your grace's penetramarriage of your late duchess with his nephew. tion. Either we suffer the French to make an acquiBut ties of this tender nature cannot be drawn too sition, the importance of which you have probably close; and it may possibly be a part of the duke of no conception of; or we oppose them by an underBedford's ambition, after making her an honest wo-hand management, which only disgraces us in the man, to work a miracle of the same sort upon your eyes of Europe, without answering any purpose of grace. This worthy nobleman has long dealt in policy or prudence. From secret, indirect assisvirtue: there has been a large consumption of it in tance, a transition to some more open, decisive meashis own family; and, in the way of traffic, I dare ures, becomes unavoidable; till, at last, we find oursay, he has bought and sold more than half the repre- selves principal in the war, and are obliged to hazsentative integrity of the nation. ard everything for an object, which might have originally been obtained without expense or danger. I am not versed in the politics of the north; but this, I believe, is certain; that half the money you have distributed to carry the expulsion of Mr. Wilkes, or even your secretary's share in the last subscription, would have kept the Turks at your devotion. Was it economy my lord? or did the coy resistance you have constantly met with in the British senate make you despair of corrupting the divan? Your friends, indeed, have the first claim upon your bounty: but if 5001. a year can be spared in a pension to Sir John Moore, it would not have disgraced you to have allowed something to the secret service of the public.

Your enemies may turn their eyes without regret from this admirable system of provincial government. They will find gratification enough in the survey of your domestic and foreign policy.

In a political view, this union is not imprudent. The favor of princes is a perishable commodity. You have now a strength sufficient to command the closet, and if it be necessary to betray one friendship more, you may set even lord Bute at defiance. Mr. Stewart M'Kenzie may possibly remember what use the duke | of Bedford usually makes of his power; and our gracious sovereign, I doubt not, rejoices at this first appearance of union among his servants. His late majesty, under the happy influence of a family connection between his ministers, was relieved from cares of the government. A more active prince may, perhaps, observe with suspicion by what degrees an artful serpent grows upon his master, from the first unlimited professions of duty and attachment, to the painful representation of the necessity of the royal service, and soon in regular progression, to the humble insolence of dictating in all the obsequious forms of peremptory' submission. The interval is carefully employed in forming connections, creating interests, collecting a party, and laying the foundation of double marriages; until the deluded prince, who thought he had found a creature prostituted to his service, and insignificant enough to be always dependent upon his pleasure, finds him, at last, too strong to be commanded, and too formidable to be removed.

*His grace had lately married miss Wrottesly, niece of the good Gertrude, duchess of Bedford.

Miss Liddel, after her divorce from the duke, married lord Upper Ossory.

You will say, perhaps, that the situation of affairs at home demanded and engrossed the whole of your attention. Here, I confess, you have been active. An amiable, accomplished prince, ascends the throne under the happiest of all auspices, the acclamations and united affections of his subjects. The first measures of his reign, and even the odium of a favorite, were not able to shake their attachment. Your services, my lord, have been more successful. Since you were permitted to take the lead, we have seen the natural effects of a system of government at once both odious and contemptible. We have seen the laws sometimes scandalously relaxed, sometimes violently stretched beyond their tone. We have seen the person of the sovereign insulted; and, in profound peace, and with an undisputed title, the fidelity of his subjects brought by his own servants into pub

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