the champion of government, the world was busy, inquiring what honors or emoluments could be a sufficient recompense to a young man of his rank and fortune, for submitting to mark his entrance into life with the universal contempt and detestation of his country. His noble father had not been so precipitate. To vacate his seat in parliament; to intrude upon a county in which he had no interest or connection; to possess himself of another man's right, and to maintain it in defiance of public shame, as well as justice, bespoke a degree of zeal or of depravity, which all the favor of a pious prince could hardly requite. I protest, my lord, there is in this young man's conduct a strain of prostitution, which, for its singularity, I cannot but admire. He has discovered a new line in the human character; he has degraded even the name of Luttrell, and gratified his father's most sanguine expectations.

heath and Wimbledon might have taught him better. I cannot help wishing general Harvey joy of a colleague who does so much honor to the employment. But, my lord, this measure is too daring to pass unnoticed, too dangerous to be received with indifference or submission. You shall not have time to new model the Irish army. They will not submit to be garbled by colonel Luttrell. As a mischief to the English constitution, (for he is not worth the name of enemy) they already detest him. As a boy, impudently thrust over their heads, they will receive him with indignation and contempt. As for you, my lord, who, perhaps, are no more than the blind, unhappy instrument of lord Bute and her royal highness the princess of Wales, be assured, that you shall be called upon to answer for the advice which you have given, and either discover your accomplices,or fall a sacrifice to their security. JUNIUS.

LETTER XLI.

TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE LORD MANSFIELD. MY LORD,

November 14, 1770.

curiosity of the public, and command even your The appearance of this letter will attract the lordship's attention. I am considerably in your debt, and shall endeavor, once for all, to balance the account. Accept of this address, my lord, as a prologue to more important scenes, in which you will probably be called upon to act or suffer.

The duke of Grafton, with every possible disposition to patronize this kind of merit, was contented with pronouncing colonel Luttrell's panegyric. The gallant spirit, the disinterested zeal of the young adventurer, were echoed through the house of lords. His grace repeatedly pledged himself to the house, as an evidence of the purity of his friend Mr. Luttrell's intention, that he had engaged without any prospect of personal benefit, and that the idea of compensation would mortally offend him. The noble duke could hardly be in earnest; but he had lately quit ted his employment, and began to think it necessary to take some care of his reputation. At that very moment the Irish negotiation was probably begun. Come forward thou worthy representative of lord Bute, and tell this insulted country, who advised the king to appoint Mr. Luttrell's adjutant general to you, that it has not been owing to any particular You will not question my veracity, when I assure the army in Ireland. By what management was respect for your person that I have abstained from colonel Cunninghame prevailed on to resign his em- you so long. Besides the distress and danger with ployment, and the obsequious Gisborne to accept of which the press is threatened, when your lordship is a pension for the government of Kinsale? Was it party, and the party is to be judge, I confess I have an original stipulation with the princess of Wales; or been deterred by the difficulty of the task. Our does he owe his preferment to your lordship's partial-language has no term of reproach, the mind has no ity, or to the duke of Bedford's friendship? My lord, idea of detestation, which has not already been hapthough it may not be possible to trace this measure pily applied to you, and exhausted. Ample justice to its source, we can follow the stream, and warn the has been done, by abler pens than mine, to the sepacountry of its approaching destruction. The Eng-rate merits of your life and character. Let it be my lish nation must be roused, and put upon its guard. humble office to collect the scattered sweets till their Mr. Luttrell has already shown us how far he may united virtue tortures the sense. be trusted, whenever an open attack is to be made Permit me to begin with paying a just tribute to upon the liberties of this country. I do not doubt Scotch sincerity, wherever I find it. I own I am not that there is a deliberate plan formed. Your lordapt to confide in the professions of gentlemen of that ship best knows by whom. The corruption of the country; and, when they smile, I feel an involuntary legislative body on this side, a military force on the emotion to guard myself against mischief. With this other, and then farewell to England! It is impossible general opinion of an ancient nation, I always that any minister shall dare to advise the king to thought it much to your lordship's honor, that, in place such a man as Luttrell in the confidential post your earlier days, you were but little infected with of adjutant-general, if there were not some secret the prudence of your country. You had some origipurpose in view, which only such a man as Luttrell nal attachments, which you took every proper opporis fit to promote. The insult offered to the army in tunity to acknowledge. The liberal spirit of youth general is as gross as the outrage intended to the peo- prevailed over your native discretion. Your zeal in ple of England. What! lieutenant-colonel Luttrell ad- the cause of an unhappy prince was expressed with jutant-general of an army of sixteen thousand men! the sincerity of wine, and some of the solemnities of One would think his majesty's campaigns at Black-religion.* This, I conceive, is the most amiable point

He now says that his great object is the rank of colonel, and that he will have it. This infamous transaction ought to be explained to the public. Colonel Gisborne was quarter-master-general in Ireland. Lord Townshend persuaded him to resign to a Scotch officer, one Frazer, and gives him the government of Kinsale. Colonel Cunninghame was adjutant-general in Ireland. Lord Townshend offers him a pension, to induce him to resign to Luttrell. Cunninghame treats he must move once more. He accepts of a pension of 5001, a year untill a government of greater value shall become vacant. Colonel Cunninghame is made governor of Kinsale; and Luttrell, at last, for whom the whole machinery is put in motion, becomes adjutant-general, and in effect, takes the command of the army in Ireland.

offer with contempt. What is to be done? Poor Gisborne

of view in which your character has appeared. Like an honest man, you took that part in politics, which might have been expected from your birth, education, country, and connections. There was something genStuart. We lament the mistakes of a good man, and erous in your attachment to the banished house of do not begin to detest him until he affects to rethat loyalty you once professed? Why did you not nounce his principles. Why did you not adhere to

* This man was always a rank Jacobite. Lord Ravensworth produced the most satisfactory evidence of his having frequently drank the pretender's health on his knees.

the wisdom of the court, and to the purity of his own conscience. The name of Mr. Justice Yatesvill naturally revive in your mind some of those emotions of fear and detestation with which you alway beheld him. That great lawyer, that honest man, saw your whole conduct in the light that I do. After years of ineffectual resistance to the pernicious principles introduced by your lordship, and uniformly supported by your humble friends upon the bench, he determined to quit a court, whose proceedings and decisions he could neither assent to with honor, not oppose with success.

The injustice done to an individual* is sometimes of service to the public. Facts are apt to alarm us more than the most dangerous principles. The sur ferings and firmness of a printer have roused the duct would not bear a parliamentary inquiry; and you hoped to escape it by the meanest, the basest sacrifice of dignity and consistency that ever was made by a great magistrate. Where was your firmness, where was that vindictive spirit, of which we have seen so many examples, when a man so inconsiderable as Bingley could force you to confess, in the face of this country, that, for two years together, you had illegally deprived an English subject of his liberty, and that he had triumphed over you at last? Yet, I own, my lord, that yours is not an uncommon character. Women, and men like women, are timid, vindictive and irresolute. Their passions counteract each other, and make the same creature at one moment hateful, at another contemptible. I fancy, my lord, some time will elapse before you venture to com mit another Englishman for refusing to answer interrogatories.t

follow the example of your worthy brother? With him you might have shared in the honor of the pretender's confidence; with him you might have preserved the integrity of your character; and England, I think, might have spared you without regret. Your friends will say, perhaps, that, although you deserted the fortune of your liege lord, you have adhered firmly to the principles which drove his father from the throne; that, without openly supporting the person, you have done essential service to the cause; and consoled yourself for the loss of a favorite family, by reviving and establishing the maxims of their government. This is the way in which a Scotchman's understanding corrects the errors of his heart. My lord, I acknowledge the truth of the defense, and can trace it through all your conduct. I see through your whole life one uni-public attention. You knew and felt that your conform plan to enlarge the power of the crown, at the expense of the liberty of the subject. To this object your thoughts, words, and actions, have been constantly directed., In contempt or ignorance of the common law of England, you have made it your study to introduce into the court where you preside, maxims of jurisprudence unknown to Englishmen. The Roman code, the law of nations, and the opinion of foreign civilians, are your perpetual theme; but who ever heard you mention Magna Charta, or the Bill of Rights, with approbation or respect? By such treacherous arts the noble simplicity and free spirit of our Saxon laws were first corrupted. The Norman conquest was not complete, until Norman lawyers had introduced their laws, and reduced slavery to a system. This one leading principle directs your interpretation of the laws, and accounts for your treatment of juries. It is not in political questions only (for there the courtier might be forThe doctrine you have constantly delivered, in cases given,) but let the cause be what it may, your under- of libel, is another powerful evidence of a settled standing is equally on the rack, either to contract plan to contract the legal power of juries, and to draw the power of the jury, or to mislead their judgment. questions, inseparable from fact, within the arbitrium For the truth of this assertion, I appeal to the doc- of the court. Here, my lord, you have fortune on trine you delivered in lord Grosvenor's cause. An your side. When you invade the province of the action for criminal conversation being brought by a jury, in matter of libel, you, in effect, attack the peer against a prince of the blood, you were daring liberty of the press, and, with a single stroke, wound enough to tell the jury, that, in fixing the damages, two of your greatest enemies. In some instances you they were to pay no regard to the quality or fortune have succeeded, because jurymen are too often ignoof the parties: that it was a trial between A and B; rant of their own rights, and too apt to be awed by that they were to consider the offense in a moral light the authority of a chief justice. In other criminal only, and give no greater damages to a peer of the prosecutions, the malice of the design is confessedly realm, than to the meanest mechanic. I shall not as much the subject of consideration to a jury as the attempt to refute a doctrine, which if it was meant certainty of the fact. If a different doctrine prevails for law, carries falsehood and absurdity upon the face in the case of libels, why should it not extend to ell of it; but, if it was meant for a declaration of your criminal cases? Why not to capital offenses? I see political creed, is clear and consistent. Under an no reason (and I dare say you will agree with me, arbitrary government, all ranks and distinctions are that there is no good one) why the life of the subconfounded: the honor of a nobleman is no more con-ject should be better protected against you, than his sidered than the reputation of a peasant; for, with liberty or property. Why should you enjoy the fail different liveries, they are equally slaves. power of pillory, fine, and imprisonment, and not be indulged with hanging or transportation? With your lordship's fertile genius and merciful dispos tion, I can conceive such an exercise of the power you have, as could hardly be aggravated by that which you have not.

Even in matters of private property, we see the same bias and inclination to depart from the decisions of your predecessors, which you certainly ought to receive as evidence of the common law. Instead of those certain positive rules by which the judgment of a court of law should invariably be deBut, my lord, since you have labored (and not untermined, you have fondly introduced your own un-successfully) to destroy the substance of the trial. settled notions of equity and substantial justice. Decisions given upon such principles do not alarm the public so much as they ought, because the consequence and tendency of each particular instance is not observed or regarded. In the meantime, the practice gains ground; the court of king's bench becomes a court of equity; and the judge, instead of consulting strictly the law of the land, refers only to

*The oppression of an obscure individual gave birth to the famous Habeas Corpus Act of 31 Car. II.which is fre quently considered as another Magna Charte of this king

dom.

Blackstone iii 135.

↑ Bingley was committed for contempt. in not submitting to be examined. He lay in prison two years until the crown thought the matter might occasion some serious complaint, and therefore he was let out, in the same contumelious state he had been put in, with all hissins about him, unanointed and unanealed. There was much coquetry between the court and the attorney general, about who should undergo the ridicule of letting him escape.— Vide another Letter to Almon, p. 189.

why should you suffer the form of the verdict to re- of common sense, or the integrity of fair argument, main? Why force twelve honest men, in palpable I shall be understood by your lordship, when I assert, violation of their oaths, to pronounce their fellow- that, if a jury, or any other court of judicature, (for subject a guilty man, when, almost at the same mo- jurors and judges) have no right to enter into a cause ment, you forbid their inquiring into the only cir- or question of law, it signifies nothing whether their cumstance which, in the eye of law and reason, con- decisions be or be not according to law. Their decistitutes guilt-the malignity or innocence of his in- sion is, in itself, a mere nullity; the parties are not tentions? But I understand your lordship. If you bound to submit to it; and, if the jury run any risk could succeed in making the trial by jury useless of punishment, it is not for pronouncing a corrupt or and ridiculous, you might then, with greater safety, illegal verdict, but for the illegality of meddling introduce a bill into parliament for enlarging the with a point on which they have no legal authority jurisdiction of the court, and extending your favorite to decide.† trial by interrogatories to every question in which I cannot quit this subject without reminding your the life or liberty of an Englishman is concerned.* lordship of the name of Mr. Benson. Without offerYour charge to the jury, in the prosecution against ing any legal objection, you ordered a special juryAlmon and Woodfall, contradicts the highest legal man to be set aside, in a cause where the king was authorities, as well as the plainest dictates of reason. prosecutor. The novelty of the fact required explaIn Miller's case, and still more expressly in that of nation. Will you condescend to tell the world by Baldwin, you have proceeded a step farther, and what law or custom you were authorized to make a grossly contradicted yourself. You may know, per- peremptory challenge of a juryman? The parties, haps, though I do not mean to insult you by an ap- indeed, have this power; and, perhaps, your lordship, peal to your experience, that the language of truth is having accustomed yourself to unite the characters of uniform and consistent. To depart from it safely, judge and party, may claim it in virtue of the new requires memory and discretion. In the last two capacity you have assumed, and profit by your own trials, your charge to the jury began, as usual, with wrong. The time within which you might have assuring them, that they had nothing to do with the been punished for this daring attempt to pack a jury, law; that they were to find the bare fact, and not is, I fear, elapsed; but no length of time shall erase concern themselves about the legal inferences drawn the record of it.

from it, or the degree of the defendant's guilt. Thus The mischiefs you have done this country are not far you were consistent with your former practice. confined to your interpretation of the laws. You But how will you account for the conclusion? You are a minister, my lord; and, as such, have long been told the jury, that "if, after all, they would take consulted. Let us candidly examine what use you upon themselves to determine the law, they might do have made of your ministerial influence. I will not it, but they must be very sure that they determine descend to little matters, but come at once to those according to law; for it touched their consciences, important points on which your resolution was and they acted at their peril." If I understand your waited for, on which the expectation of your opinion first proposition, you mean to affirm, that the jury were kept a great part of the nation in suspense. A connot competent judges of the law in the criminal case stitutional question arises upon a declaration of the of a libel; that it did not fall within their jurisdic- law of parliament, by which the freedom of election, tion; and that with respect to them, the malice or and the birth-right of the subject, were supposed to innocence of the defendant's intentions would be a have been invaded. The king's servants are accused question coram non judice. But the second proposi- of violating the constitution. The nation is in a fertion clears away your own difficulties, and restores ment. The ablest men of all parties engage in the the jury to all their judicial capacities. You make question, and exert their utmost abilities in the disthe competence of the court to depend upon the cussion of it. What part has the honest lord Manslegality of the decision. In the first instance, you field acted? As an eminent judge of the law, his deny the power absolutely in the second, you admit opinion would have been respected. As a peer, he the power, provided it be legally exercised. Now, had a right to demand an audience of his sovereign, my lord, without pretending to reconcile the distinc- and inform him, that his ministers were pursuing tions of Westminster-hall with the simple information unconstitutional measures. Upon other occasions,

The philosophical poet doth notably describe the damnable and damned proceedings of the judge of hell.

my lord, you have no difficulty in finding your way into the closet. The pretended neutrality of belonging to no party will not save your reputation. In a question merely political, an honest man may stand neuter. But the laws and constitution are the general property of the subject: not to defend, is to relinquish: and who is there so senseless as to renounce his share in a common benefit, unless he hopes to First he punisheth, and then he heareth, and lastly compell-profit by a new division of the spoil? As a lord of eth to confess, and makes and mars laws at his pleasure: parliament, you were repeatedly called upon to condemn or defend the new law declared by the house

'Gnossius hæc Radamanthus habet durissima regna, Castigatque, auditque dolos, subigitque fateri '

like as the centurion, in the holy history, did to St. Paul; for

the text saith, Centurio apprehendi Poulum jussit, et se catenis ligari, et tunc interrogabat quis fuisset, et quid fecisset.' But good judges and justices abhor these courses. Coke, 2 Inst. 53.

Directly the reverse of the doctrine he constantly maintained in the house of lords, and elsewhere, upon the decision of the Middlesex election. He invariably asserted, that the decision must be legal because the court was competent; and never could be prevailed on to enter farther into the question.

These iniquitous prosecutions cost the best of princes six thousand pounds, and ended in the total defeat and disgrace of the prosecutors. In the course of one of them, judge Aston had the unparalleled impudence to tell Mr. Morris, a gentleman of unquestionable honor and integrity, and who was then giving his evidence on oath, that he should pay very little regard to any affidavit he should таке.

Justinian, you might have made an incomparable prætor. It is remarkable enough, but I hope not ominous, that the laws you understand best, and the judges you affect to admire most, flourished in the decline of a great empire, and are supposed to have contributed to its fall.

LETTER XLII.

of commons You affected to have scruples, and every expedient was attempted to remove them. The question was proposed and urged to you in a thousand different shapes. Your prudence still supplied you with evasion; your resolution was invincible. For my own part, I am not anxious to penetrate this solemn secret. I care not to whose wisdom it is Here, my lord, it may be proper for us to pause entrusted, nor how soon you carry it with you to the together. It is not for my own sake that I wish you grave.* You have betrayed your opinion by the to consider the delicacy of your situation. Beware very care you have taken to conceal it. It is not how you indulge the first emotions of your resentfrom lord Mansfield that we expect any reserve in ment. This paper is delivered to the world, and candeclaring his real sentiments in favor of government, not be recalled. The prosecution of an innocent or in opposition to the people; nor is it difficult to printer cannot alter facts, nor refute arguments. Do account for the motives of a timid, dishonest heart, not furnish me with farther materials against yourwhich neither has virtue enough to acknowledge self. An honest man, like the true religion, appeals truth, or courage to contradict it. Yet you continue to the understanding, or modestly confides in the into support an administration which you know is ternal evidence of his conscience. The impostor emuniversally odious, and which, on some occasions, ploys force instead of argument, imposes silence you yourself speak of with contempt. You would where he cannot convince, and propagates his characfain be thought to take no share in government, ter by the sword. JUNIUS. while, in reality, you are the main spring of the machine. Here, too, we trace the little, prudential policy of a Scotchman. Instead of acting that open, generous part which becomes your rank and station, you TO THE PRINTER OF THE PUBLIC ADVERTISER. meanly skulk into the closet, and give your sovereign such advice as you have not the spirit to avow SIR. January 30, 1771. or defend. You secretly engross the power, while If we recollect in what manner the king's friends you decline the title of a minister; and though you have been constantly employed, we shall have no readare not be chancellor, you know how to secure the son to be surprised at any condition of disgrace to emoluments of the office. Are the seals to be for which the once respected name of Englishmen may ever in commission, that you may enjoy five thousand be degraded. His majesty has no cares, but such as pounds a year? I beg pardon, my lord; your fears concern the laws and constitution of this country. In have interposed at last, and forced you to resign. his royal breast there is no room left for resentment, The odium of continuing speaker of the house of no place for hostile sentiments against the natural lords, upon such terins, was too formidable to be re-enemies of his crown. The system of government is sisted. What a multitude of bad passions are forced uniform: violence and oppression at home can only to submit to a constitutional infirmity! But though be supported by treachery and submission abroad. you have relinquished the salary, you still assume When the civil rights of the people are daringly inthe rights of a minister. Your conduct, it seems, vaded on one side, what have we to expect, but that must be defended in parliament. For what other their political rights should be deserted and betrayed, purpose is your wretched friend, that miserable ser- in the same proportion, on the other? The plan of jeant, posted to the house of commons? Is it in the domestic policy which has been invariably pursued abilities of a Mr. Leigh to defend the great lord from the moment of his present majesty's accession, Mansfield? Or is he only the punch of the puppet- engrosses all the attention of his servants. They show, to speak as he is prompted by the chief juggler know that the security of their places depends upon behind the curtain?† their maintaining, at any hazard, the secret system of the closet. A foreign war might embarrass, an unfavorable event might ruin the minister, and defeat the deep-laid scheme of policy to which he and his associates owe their employments. Rather than suffer the execution of that scheme to be delayed or interrupted, the king has been advised to make a public surrender, a solemn sacrifice, in the face of all Europe, not only of the interests of his subjects, but of his own personal reputation, and of the dignity of that crown which his predecessors have worn with honor. These are strong terms, sir, but they are sup ported by fact and argument.

In public affairs, my lord, cunning, let it be ever so well wrought, will not conduct a man honorably through life. Like bad money, it may be current for a time, but it will soon be cried down. It can not consist with a liberal spirit, though it be sometimes united with extraordinary qualifications. When I acknowledge your abilities, you may believe I am sincere. I feel for human nature, when I see a man, so gifted as you are, descend to such vile practices. Yet do not suffer your vanity to console you too soon. Believe me, my good lord, you are not admired in the same degree in which you are detested. It is only the partiality of your friends that balances the defects of your heart with the superiority of your understanding. No learned man, even among your own tribe, thinks you qualified to preside in court of common law: yet it is confessed, that, under

a

He said, in the house of lords, that he believed he should carry his opinion with him to the grave. It was afterwards reported, that he had entrusted it in special confidence to the ingenious duke of Cumberland.

The king of Great Britain has been for some years in possession of an island, to which, as the ministry themselves have repeatedly asserted, the Spaniards had no claim of right. The importance of the place is not in question; if it were, a better judgment might be formed of it, from the opinion of lord Anson and lord Egmont, and from the anxiety of the Spaniards, than from any fallacious insinuations thrown out by men, whose interest it is to undervalue that property which they are determined to relinquish. The pretensions of Spain were a subject of negotiation between the two courts. They had been discussed, but not admitted. The king of Spain, in these circumstances, bids adieu to amicable negotiation, and appeals directly to the sword. The expe

+ This paragraph gagged poor Leigh. I am really condition against Port Egmont does not appear to have cerned for the man, and wish it were possible to open his been a sudden, ill-concerted enterprise: it seems to mouth. He is a very pretty orator.

the speech, did not foresee that they should ever accede to srch an accommodation as they have since advised their master to accept of.

The king says, "The honor of my crown, and the rights of my people, are deeply affected." The Spaniard, in his reply, says, "I will give you back possession, but I adhere to my claim of prior right, reserving the assertion of it for a more favorable opportunity."

have been conducted not only with the usual military precautions, but in all the forms and ceremonies of war. A frigate was first employed, to examine the strength of the place. A message was then sent, demanding immediate possession, in the Catholic king's name, and ordering our people to depart. At last, a military force appears, and compels the garrison to surrender. A formal capitulation ensues; and his majesty's ship, which might at least have been permitted to bring home his troops immedi- The speech says, "I made an immediate demand ately, is detained in port twenty days, and her rud- of satisfaction; and, if that fails, I am prepared to do der forcibly taken away. This train of facts carries myself justice." This immediate demand must have no appearance of the rashness or violence of a Span- been sent to Madrid on the 12th of September, or in ish governor: on the contrary, the whole plan seems a few days after. It were certainly refused, or evaded, to have been formed and executed, in consequence of and the king has not done himself justice. When deliberate orders, and a regular instruction, from the the first magistrate speaks to the nation, some care Spanish court. Mr. Buccarelli is not a pirate, nor should be taken of his apparent veracity. has he been treated as such by those who employed The speech proceeds to say, "I shall not disconhim. I feel for the honor of a gentleman, when I tinue my preparations until I have received proper affirm, that our king owes him a signal reparation. reparation for the injury." If this assurance may be Where will the humiliation of this country end? A relied on, what an enormous expense is entailed sine king of Great Britain, not contented with placing || die upon this unhappy country! Restitution of a himself upon a level with a Spanish governor, de- possession, and reparation of an injury, are as differscends so low as to do a notorious injustice to that ent in substance as they are in language. The very governor. As a salvo for his own reputation, he has act of restitution may contain, as in this instance it been advised to traduce the character of a brave palpably does, a shameful aggravation of the injury. officer, and to treat him as a common robber, when A man of spirit does not measure the degree of an he knew, with certainty, that Mr. Buccarelli had injury by the mere positive damage he has sustained; acted in obedience to his orders, and had done no he considers the principle on which it is founded; more than his duty. Thus it happens, in private life, he resents the superiority asserted over him; and with a man who has no spirit nor sense of honor. rejects with indignation the claim of right which One of his equals orders a servant to strike him: in- his adversary endeavors to establish, and would stead of returning the blow to the master, his cour- force him to acknowledge. age is contented with throwing an aspersion, equally false and public, upon the character of the servant. This short recapitulation was necessary to introduce the consideration of his majesty's speech of the 13th of November, 1770, and the subsequent measures of government. The excessive caution with which the speech was drawn up, had impressed upon me an early conviction, that no serious resentment was thought of, and that the conclusion of the business, whenever it happened, must, in some degree, be dishonorable to England. There appears, through the whole speech, a guard and reserve in the choice At this rate, if our king had discovered the spirit of of expression, which shows how careful the ministry a man, if he had made a peremptory demand of satiswere not to embarrass their future projects by any faction, the king of Spain would have given him a perfirm or spirited declaration from the throne. When emptory refusal. But why this unseasonable, this all hopes of peace are lost, his majesty tells his par- ridiculous mention of the king of Great Britain's paliament, that he is preparing, not for barbarous war, cific intentions? Have they ever been in question?. but (with all his mother's softness) for a different Was he the aggressor? Does he attack foreign powsituation. An open hostility, authorized by the ers without provocation? Does he even resist, when Catholic king, is called an act of a governor. This he is insulted? No, sir: if any ideas of strife or hosact, to avoid the mention of a regular siege and sur-tility have entered his royal mind, they have a very render, passes under the piratical description of seiz- different direction. The enemies of England have ing by force; and the thing taken is described, not as nothing to fear from them. After all, sir, to what a part of the king's territory, or proper dominion, but kind of disavowal has the king of Spain at last conmerely as a possession; a word expressly chosen in sented? Supposing it made in proper time, it should contradistinction to, and exclusion of, the ideas of have been accompanied with instant restitution; and right, and to prepare us for a future surrender both of if Mr. Buccarelli acted without orders, he deserved the right and of the possession. Yet this speech, sir, death. Now sir, instead of immediate restitution, cautious and equivocal as it is, cannot, by any soph- we have a four months' negotiation; and the officer, istry, be accommodated to the measures which have whose act is disavowed, returns to court, and is since been adopted. It seemed to promise, that, loaded with honors. whatever might be given up by secret stipulation, If the actual situation of Europe be considered, the some care would be taken to save appearances to the treachery of the king's servants, particularly of lord public. The event shows us, that to depart, in the North, who takes the whole upon himself, will apminutest article, from the nicety and strictness of pear in the strongest colors of aggravation. Our alpunctilio, is as dangerous to national honor as to lies were masters of the Mediteranean. The king female virtue. The woman who admits of one famil- of France's present aversion from war and iarity seldom knows where to stop, or what to refuse; the distraction of his affairs, are notorious. and, when the counsels of a great country give way in a single instance, when they once are inclined to submission, every step accelerates the rapidity of the descent. The ministry themselves, when they framed

The motives on which the Catholic king makes restitution, are, if possible, more insolent and disgraceful to our sovereign, than even the declaratory condition annexed to it. After taking four months to consider whether the expedition was undertaken by his own orders or not, he condescends to disavow the enterprise, and to restore the island; not from any regard to justice, not from any regard he bears to his Britannic majesty, but merely "from the persuasion in which he is of the pacific sentiments of the king of Great Britain."

He is now in a state of war with his people. In vain did the Catholic king solicit him to take part in the quarrel against us. His finances were in the last disorder; and it was probable that his troops might