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casm the Duke of Bedford is addressed :- My lord, to consult the propriety of a bad character. Even you are so little accustomed to receive any marks of now they tell you that life is no more than a drarespect or esteem from the public, that if in the fol-matic scene, in which the hero should preserve his lowing lines a compliment or expression of applause consistency to the last; and that, as you lived withshould escape me, I fear you would consider it as a out virtue, you should die without repentance.' mockery of your established character, and perhaps These are certainly brilliant pieces of composian insult to your understanding. You have nice tion. The tone and spirit in which they are confeelings, my lord, if we may judge from your resent-ceived are harsh and reprehensible-in some parts ments. Cautious, therefore, of giving offence where almost fiendish-but they are the emanations of a you have so little deserved it, I shall leave the illus- powerful and cultivated genius, that, under better tration of your virtues to other hands. Your friends moral discipline, might have done lasting honour to have a privilege to play upon the easiness of your literature and virtue. The acknowledged productemper, or probably they are better acquainted with tions of Sir Philip Francis have equal animation, but your good qualities than I am. You have done good less studied brevity and force of style. The soaring by stealth. The rest is upon record. You have ardour of youth had flown; his hopes were crushed; still left ample room for speculation when pane- he was not writing under the mask of a fearless and gyric is exhausted.' impenetrable secrecy. Yet in 1812, in a letter to After having reproached the duke for corruption Earl Grey on the subject of the blockade of Norway, and imbecility, the splendid tirade of Junius con- we find such vigorous sentences as the following: cludes in a strain of unmeasured yet lofty invec-Though a nation may be bought and sold, deceived tive: Let us consider you, then, as arrived at the or betrayed, oppressed or beggared, and in every summit of worldly greatness; let us suppose that other sense undone, all is not lost, as long as a sense all your plans of avarice and ambition are accom- of national honour survives the general ruin. Even plished, and your most sanguine wishes gratified in an individual cannot be crushed by events or overthe fear as well as the hatred of the people. Can age whelmed by adversity, if, in the wreck and ruin of itself forget that you are now in the last act of life? his fortune, the character of the man remains unCan gray hairs make folly venerable? and is there blemished. That force is elastic, and, with the help no period to be reserved for meditation and retire- of resolution, will raise him again out of any depth ment? For shame, my lord! Let it not be recorded of calamity. But if the injured sufferer, whether of you that the latest moments of your life were it be a great or a little community, a number dedicated to the same unworthy pursuits, the same of individuals or a single person, be content to subbusy agitations, in which your youth and manhood mit in silence, and to endure without resentment were exhausted. Consider that, though you cannot disgrace your former life, you are violating the character of age, and exposing the impotent imbecility, after you have lost the vigour, of the passions.

Your friends will ask, perhaps, "Whither shall this unhappy old man retire? Can he remain in the metropolis, where his life has been so often threatened, and his palace so often attacked? If he returns to Woburn, scorn and mockery await him he must create a solitude round his estate, if he would avoid the face of reproach and derision. At Plymouth his destruction would be more than probable; at Exeter inevitable. No honest Englishman will ever forget his attachment, nor any honest Scotchman forgive his treachery, to Lord Bute. At every town he enters, he must change his liveries and name. Whichever way he flies, the hue and cry of the country pursues him.

In another kingdom, indeed, the blessings of his administration have been more sensibly felt, his virtues better understood; or, at worst, they will not for him alone forget their hospitality." As well might Verres have returned to Sicily. You have twice escaped, my lord; beware of a third experiment. The indignation of a whole people plundered, insulted, and oppressed, as they have been, will not always be disappointed.

It is in vain, therefore, to shift the scene; you can no more fly from your enemies than from yourself. Persecuted abroad, you look into your own heart for consolation, and find nothing but reproaches and despair. But, my lord, you may quit the field of business, though not the field of danger; and though you cannot be safe, you may cease to be ridiculous. I fear you have listened too long to the advice of those pernicious friends with whose interests you have sordidly united your own, and for whom you have sacrificed everything that ought to be dear to a man of honour. They are still base enough to encourage the follies of your age, as they once did the vices of your youth. As little acquainted with the rules of decorum as with the laws of morality, they will not suffer you to profit by experience, nor even

if no complaints shall be uttered, no murmur shall be heard, deploratum est-there must be something celestial in the spirit that rises from that descent.

In March 1798, I had your voluntary and entire concurrence in the following, as well as many other abandoned propositions-when we drank pure wine together-when you were young, and I was not superannuated-when we left the cold infusions of prudence to fine ladies and gentle politicians-when true wisdom was not degraded by the name of moderation-when we cared but little by what majorities the nation was betrayed, or how many felons were acquitted by their peers-and when we were not afraid of being intoxicated by the elevation of a spirit too highly rectified. In England and Scotland, the general disposition of the people may be fairly judged of by the means which are said to be necessary to counteract it-an immense standing army, barracks in every part of the country, the bill of rights suspended, and, in effect, a military despotism.' The following vigorous and Junius-like passage is from a speech made by Francis in answer to the remark of Lord Chancellor Thurlow, namely, that it would have been well for the country if General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr Francis, had been drowned in their passage to India. Sir Philip observed:- His second reason for obtaining a seat in parliament, was to have an opportunity of explaining his own conduct if it should be questioned, or defending it if it should be attacked. The last and not least urgent reason was, that he might be ready to defend the character of his colleagues, not against specific charges, which he was sure would never be produced, but against the language of calumny, which endeavoured to asperse without daring to accuse. It was well known that a gross and public insult had been offered to the memory of General Clavering and Colonel Monson, by a person of high rank in this country. He was happy when he heard that his name was included in it with theirs. So highly did he respect the character of those men, that he deemed it an honour to share in the injustice it had suffered. It was in compliance

With still many generous exceptions, the body of the country is lost in apathy and indifference-sometimes strutting on stilts-for the most part grovelling on its belly-no life-blood in the heart-and instead of reason or reflection, a caput mortuum for a head-piece; of all revolutions this one is the worst, because it makes any other impossible."* Among the lighter sketches of Francis may be taken the following brief characters of Fox and Pitt: They know nothing of Mr Fox who think that he was what is commonly called well educated. I know that it was directly or very nearly the reverse. His mind educated itself, not by early study or instruction, but by active listening and rapid apprehension. He said so in the House of Commons when he and Mr Burke parted. His powerful understanding grew like a forest oak, not by cultivation, but by neglect. Mr Pitt was a plant of an inferior order, though marvellous in its kind-a smooth bark, with the deciduous pomp and decoration of a rich foliage, and blossoms and flowers which drop off of themselves, and leave the tree naked at last to be judged by its fruits. He, indeed, as I suspect, had been educated more than enough, until there was nothing natural and spontaneous left in him. He was too polished and accurate in the minor embellishments of his art to be a great artist in anything. He could have painted the boat, and the fish, and the broken nets, but not the two fishermen. He knew his audience, and, with or without eloquence, how to summon the generous passions to his applause. The human eye soon grows weary

with the forms of the house, and not to shelter himself, or out of tenderness to the party, that he forbore to name him. He meant to describe him so exactly that he could not be mistaken. He declared, in his place in a great assembly, and in the course of a grave deliberation, "that it would have been happy for this country if General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr Francis, had been drowned in their passage to India." If this poor and spiteful invective had been uttered by a man of no consequence or repute-by any light, trifling, inconsiderate person -by a lord of the bed-chamber, for example-or any of the other silken barons of modern days, he should have heard it with indifference; but when it was seriously urged, and deliberately insisted on, by a grave lord of parliament, by a judge, by a man of ability and eminence in his profession, whose personal disposition was serious, who carried gravity to sternness, and sternness to ferocity, it could not be received with indifference, or answered without resentment. Such a man would be thought to have inquired before he pronounced. From his mouth a reproach was a sentence, an invective was a judgment. The accidents of life, and not any original distinction that he knew of, had placed him too high, and himself at too great a distance from him, to admit of any other answer than a public defiance for General Clavering, for Colonel Monson, and for himself. This was not a party question, nor should it be left to so feeble an advocate as he was to support it. The friends and fellow-soldiers of General Clavering and Colonel Monson would assist him in defending their memory. He demanded and expected the support of every man of honour in that house and in the kingdom. What character was safe, if slander was permitted to attack the reputa-With a callous heart there can be no genius in the imagination of two of the most honourable and virtuous tion or wisdom in the mind; and therefore the prayer with men that ever were employed, or ever perished in equal truth and sublimity says "Incline our hearts unto the service of their country. He knew that the wisdom." Resolute thoughts find words for themselves, and authority of this man was not without weight; but make their own vehicle. Impression and expression are relahe had an infinitely higher authority to oppose to tive ideas. He who feels deeply will express strongly. The it. He had the happiness of hearing the merits of language of slight sensations is naturally feeble and superficial.' General Clavering and Colonel Monson acknow--Reflections on the Abundance of Paper. 1810.-Francis excelled in pointed and pithy expression. After his return to ledged and applauded, in terms to which he was not at liberty to do more than to allude-they were claiming, after he had pronounced an animated eulogy on Lord parliament in 1784, he gave great offence to Mr Pitt, by exrapid and expressive. He must not venture to Chatham, But he is dead, and has left nothing in this world repeat, lest he should do them injustice, or violate that resembles him! In a speech delivered at a political meetthe forms of respect, where essentially he owed and ing in 1817, he said, 'We live in times that call for wisdom in felt the most; but he was sufficiently understood. contemplation and virtue in action; but in which virtue and The generous sensations that animate the royal wisdom will not do without resolution.' When the propertymind were easily distinguished from those which tax was imposed, he exclaimed, that the ministers were now rankled in the heart of that person who was sup- coming to the life-blood of the country, and the more they posed to be the keeper of the royal conscience.' wanted the less they would get.' In a letter to Lord Holland, written in 1816, he remarks, Whether you look up to the top

In the last of the private letters of Junius to Woodfall-the last, indeed, of his appearances in that character-he says, with his characteristic ardour and impatience, I feel for the honour of this country, when I see that there are not ten men in it who will unite and stand together upon any one question. But it is all alike, vile and contemptible.' This was written in January 1773. Forty-three years afterwards, in 1816, Sir Philip Francis thus writes in a letter on public affairs, addressed to Lord Holland, and the similarity in manner and sentiment is striking. The style is not unworthy of Junius: My mind sickens and revolts at the scenes of public depravity, of personal baseness, and of ruinous folly, little less than universal, which have passed before us, not in dramatic representation, but in real action, since the year 1792, in the government of this once flourishing as well as glorious kingdom. In that period a deadly revolution has taken place in the moral character of the nation, and even in the instinct of the gregarious multitude. Passion of any kind, if it existed, might excite action.

*The character of Francis is seen in the following admirable observation, which is at once acute and profound :

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or down to the bottom, whether you mount with the froth or sink with the sediment, no rank in this country can support a perfectly degraded name. My recital,' he says to Lord Holland, shall be inflicted on you, as if it were an operation, with compassion for the patient, with the brevity of impatience and the rapidity of youth; for I feel or fancy that I am gradually growing young again, in my way back to infancy. The taper that burns in the socket flashes more than once before it dies. I would not long outlive myself if I could help it, like some of my old friends who pretend to be alive, when to my certain knowledge they have been dead these seven years. The writer of a memoir of Francis, in the Annual Obituary (1820), states that one of his maxims was, That the views of every one should be directed towards a solid, however moderate independence, without which no man can be happy or even honest.' There is a remarkable coincidence (too close to be accidental) in a private letter by Junius to his publisher Woodfall, dated March 5, 1772: As for myself, be assured that I am far above all pecuniary views, and no other person I think has any claim to share with you. Make the most of it, therefore, and let all your views in life be directed to a solid, however moderate independence. Without it no man can be happy, nor even honest."

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of an unbounded plain, and sooner, I believe, than of any limited portion of space, whatever its dimensions may be. There is a calm delight, a dolcé riposo, in viewing the smooth-shaven verdure of a bowling green as long as it is near. You must learn from repetition that those properties are inseparable from the idea of a flat surface, and that flat and tiresome are synonymous. The works of nature, which command admiration at once, and never lose it, are compounded of grand inequalities.'

that which serves only to promote the temporary interest and miserable ambition of a minister.

You ascended the throne with a declared (and, I doubt not, a sincere) resolution of giving universal satisfaction to your subjects. You found them pleased with the novelty of a young prince, whose countenance promised even more than his words, and loyal to you not only from principle but passion. It was not a cold profession of allegiance to the first magistrate, but a partial, animated attachment to a favourite prince, the native of their country. They did not [Junius's Celebrated Letter to the King.] wait to examine your conduct, nor to be determined by experience, but gave you a generous credit for the To the Printer of the Public Advertiser.—19th December 1769. future blessings of your reign, and paid you in adSIR-When the complaints of a brave and power- vance the dearest tribute of their affections. Such, ful people are observed to increase in proportion to sir, was once the disposition of a people who now surthe wrongs they have suffered; when, instead of sink-round your throne with reproaches and complaints. ing into submission, they are roused to resistance, the Do justice to yourself. Banish from your mind those time will soon arrive at which every inferior considera- unworthy opinions with which some interested pertion must yield to the security of the sovereign, and sons have laboured to possess you. Distrust the men to the general safety of the state. There is a moment who tell you that the English are naturally light and of difficulty and danger, at which flattery and false- inconstant; that they complain without a cause. hood can no longer deceive, and simplicity itself can Withdraw your confidence equally from all parties; no longer be misled. Let us suppose it arrived. Let from ministers, favourites, and relations; and let there us suppose a gracious well-intentioned prince made be one moment in your life in which you have consensible at last of the great duty he owes to his people, sulted your own understanding. and of his own disgraceful situation; that he looks When you affectedly renounced the name of Enground him for assistance, and asks for no advice but | lishman, believe me, sir, you were persuaded to pay how to gratify the wishes and secure the happiness a very ill-judged compliment to one part of your subof his subjects. In these circumstances, it may bejects at the expense of another. While the natives of matter of curious speculation to consider, if an honest Scotland are not in actual rebellion, they are unman were permitted to approach a king, in what terms doubtedly entitled to protection; nor do I mean to he would address himself to his sovereign. Let it be condemn the policy of giving some encouragement to imagined, no matter how improbable, that the first pre- the novelty of their affection for the house of Hanover. judice against his character is removed; that the cere- I am ready to hope for everything from their new-born monious difficulties of an audience are surmounted; zeal, and from the future steadiness of their allegiance. that he feels himself animated by the purest and most But hitherto they have no claim to your favour. To honourable affection to his king and country; and that honour them with a determined predilection and conthe great person whom he addresses has spirit enough fidence, in exclusion of your English subjects-who to bid him speak freely, and understanding enough to placed your family, and in spite of treachery and relisten to him with attention. Unacquainted with the bellion, have supported it, upon the throne is a misvain impertinence of forms, he would deliver his sen- take too gross for even the unsuspecting generosity of timents with dignity and firmness, but not without youth. In this error we see a capital violation of the respect :most obvious rules of policy and prudence. We trace it, however, to an original bias in your education, and are ready to allow for your inexperience.

To the same early influence we attribute it, that you have descended to take a share not only in the narrow views and interests of particular persons, but in the fatal malignity of their passions. At your accession to the throne the whole system of government was altered; not from wisdom or deliberation, but because it had been adopted by your predecessor. A little personal motive of pique and resentment was sufficient to remove the ablest servants of the crown; but it is not in this country, sir, that such men can be dishonoured by the frowns of a king. They were dismissed, but could not be disgraced.

Sir-It is the misfortune of your life, and originally the cause of every reproach and distress which has attended your government, that you should never have been acquainted with the language of truth till you heard it in the complaints of your people. It is not, however, too late to correct the error of your education. We are still inclined to make an indulgent allowance for the pernicious lessons you received in your youth, and to form the most sanguine hopes from the natural benevolence of your disposition. We are far from thinking you capable of a direct deliberate purpose to invade those original rights of your subjects on which all their civil and political liberties depend. Had it been possible for us to entertain a suspicion so dishonourable to your character, we should Without entering into a minuter discussion of the long since have adopted a style of remonstrance very merits of the peace, we may observe, in the imprudent distant from the humility of complaint. The doc- hurry with which the first overtures from France were trine inculcated by our laws, that the king can do accepted, in the conduct of the negotiation, and no wrong,' is admitted without reluctance. We sepa- terms of the treaty, the strongest marks of that precirate the amiable good-natured prince from the folly pitate spirit of concession with which a certain part and treachery of his servants, and the private virtues of your subjects have been at all times ready to purof the man from the vices of his government. Were chase a peace with the natural enemies of this country. it not for this just distinction, I know not whether On your part we are satisfied that everything was your majesty's condition, or that of the English na-honourable and sincere; and if England was sold to tion, would deserve most to be lamented. I would prepare your mind for a favourable reception of truth, by removing every painful offensive idea of personal reproach. Your subjects, sir, wish for nothing but that, as they are reasonable and affectionate enough to separate your person from your government, so you, in your turn, would distinguish between the conduct which becomes the permanent dignity of a king, and

France, we doubt not that your majesty was equally betrayed. The conditions of the peace were matter of grief and surprise to your subjects, but not the immediate cause of their present discontent.

Hitherto, sir, you had been sacrificed to the prejudices and passions of others. With what firmness will you bear the mention of your own?

A man not very honourably distinguished in the

world commences a formal attack upon your favourite; and your majesty need not doubt that the catastrophe considering nothing but how he might best expose his will do no dishonour to the conduct of the piece. person and principles to detestation, and the national The circumstances to which you are reduced will character of his countrymen to contempt. The natives not admit of a compromise with the English nation. of that country, sir, are as much distinguished by a Undecisive qualifying measures will disgrace your peculiar character, as by your majesty's favour. Like government still more than open violence; and withanother chosen people, they have been conducted into out satisfying the people, will excite their contempt. the land of plenty, where they find themselves effec- They have too much understanding and spirit to tually marked and divided from mankind. There is accept of an indirect satisfaction for a direct injury. hardly a period at which the most irregular character Nothing less than a repeal as formal as the resolution* may not be redeemed; the mistakes of one sex find itself, can heal the wound which has been given to a retreat in patriotism; those of the other in devo- the constitution; nor will anything less be accepted. tion. Mr Wilkes brought with him into politics the I can readily believe that there is an influence suffisame liberal sentiments by which his private conduct cient to recall that pernicious vote. The House of had been directed; and seemed to think, that as there Commons undoubtedly consider their duty to the are few excesses in which an English gentleman may crown as paramount to all other obligations. To us not be permitted to indulge, the same latitude was they are indebted for only an accidental existence, allowed him in the choice of his political principles, and have justly transferred their gratitude from their and in the spirit of maintaining them. I mean to parents to their benefactors; from those who gave state, not entirely to defend, his conduct. In the them birth to the minister from whose benevolence earnestness of his zeal, he suffered some unwarrant- they derive the comforts and pleasures of their poliable insinuations to escape him. He said more than tical life; who has taken the tenderest care of their moderate men would justify, but not enough to entitle infancy, and relieves their necessities without offendhim to the honour of your majesty's personal resenting their delicacy. But if it were possible for their ment. The rays of royal indignation collected upon integrity to be degraded to a condition so vile and him, served only to illumine, and could not consume. abject, that, compared with it, the present estimation Animated by the favour of the people on one side, they stand in is a state of honour and respect, conand heated by persecution on the other, his views sider, sir, in what manner you will afterwards proceed. and sentiments changed with his situation. Hardly Can you conceive that the people of this country will serious at first, he is now an enthusiast. The coldest long submit to be governed by so flexible a House of bodies warm with opposition; the hardest sparkle in Commons? It is not in the nature of human society collision. There is a holy mistaken zeal in politics that any form of government in such circumstances as well as religion. By persuading others, we convince can long be preserved. In ours, the general contempt ourselves; the passions are engaged, and create a of the people is as fatal as their detestation. Such, maternal affection in the mind, which forces us to I am persuaded, would be the necessary effect of any love the cause for which we suffer. Is this a conten-base concession made by the present House of Comtion worthy of a king? Are you not sensible how mons; and, as a qualifying measure would not be much the meanness of the cause gives an air of ridi- accepted, it remains for you to decide whether you cule to the serious difficulties into which you have will, at any hazard, support a set of men who have been betrayed? The destruction of one man has been reduced you to this unhappy dilemma, or whether now for many years the sole object of your govern- you will gratify the united wishes of the whole people ment; and if there can be anything still more dis- of England by dissolving the parliament. graceful, we have seen for such an object the utmost influence of the executive power, and every ministerial artifice, exerted without success. Nor can you ever succeed, unless he should be imprudent enough to forfeit the protection of those laws to which you owe your crown; or unless your ministers should persuade you to make it a question of force alone, and try the whole strength of government in opposition to the people. The lessons he has received from experience will probably guard him from such excess of folly; and in your majesty's virtues we find an unquestionable assurance that no illegal violence will be attempted.

Far from suspecting you of so horrible a design, we would attribute the continued violation of the laws, and even this last enormous attack upon the vital principles of the constitution, to an ill-advised unworthy personal resentment. From one false step you have been betrayed into another; and as the cause was unworthy of you, your ministers were determined that the prudence of the execution should correspond with the wisdom and dignity of the design. They have reduced you to the necessity of choosing out of a variety of difficulties; to a situation so unhappy, that you can neither do wrong without ruin, nor right without affliction. These worthy servants have undoubtedly given you many singular proofs of their abilities. Not contented with making Mr Wilkes a man of importance, they have judiciously transferred the question from the rights and interests of one man, to the most important rights and interests of the people; and forced your subjects, from wishing well to the cause of an individual, to unite with him in their own. Let them proceed as they have begun,

All this

Taking it for granted, as I do very sincerely, that you have personally no design against the constitution, nor any view inconsistent with the good of your subjects, I think you cannot hesitate long upon the choice which it equally concerns your interest and your honour to adopt. On one side, you hazard the affections of all your English subjects; you relinquish every hope of repose to yourself, and you endanger the establishment of your family for ever. you venture for no object whatever, or for such an object as it would be an affront to you to name. Men of sense will examine your conduct with suspicion; while those who are incapable of comprehending to what degree they are injured, afflict you with clamours equally insolent and unmeaning. Supposing it possible that no fatal struggle should ensue, you determine at once to be unhappy, without the hope of a compensation either from interest or ambition. If an English king be hated or despised, he must be unhappy; and this, perhaps, is the only political truth which he ought to be convinced of without experiment. But if the English people should no longer confine their resentment to a submissive representation of their wrongs; if, following the glorious example of their ancestors, they should no longer appeal to the creature of the constitution, but to that high Being who gave them the rights of humanity, whose gifts it were sacrilege to surrender, let me ask you, sir, upon what part of your subjects would you rely for assistance?

The people of Ireland have been uniformly plun

*Of the House of Commons, on the subject of the Middlesex election.

dered and oppressed. In return, they give you every day fresh marks of their resentment. They despise the miserable governor you have sent them, because he is the creature of Lord Bute; nor is it from any natural confusion in their ideas that they are so ready to confound the original of a king with the disgraceful representation of him.

The distance of the colonies would make it impossible for them to take an active concern in your affairs, even if they were as well affected to your government as they once pretended to be to your person. They were ready enough to distinguish between you and your ministers. They complained of an act of the legislature, but traced the origin of it no higher than to the servants of the crown; they pleased themselves with the hope that their sovereign, if not favourable to their cause, at least was impartial. The decisive personal part you took against them has effectually banished that first distinction from their minds. They consider you as united with your servants against America; and know how to distinguish the sovereign and a venal parliament on one side, from the real sentiments of the English people on the other. Looking forward to independence, they might possibly receive you for their king; but if ever you retire to America, be assured they will give you such a covenant to digest, as the presbytery of Scotland would have been ashamed to offer to Charles II. They left their native land in search of freedom, and found it in a desert. Divided as they are into a thousand forms of polity and religion, there is one point in which they all agree; they equally detest the pageantry of a king, and the supercilious hypocrisy of a bishop.

It is not, then, from the alienated affections of Ireland or America that you can reasonably look for assistance: still less from the people of England, who are actually contending for their rights, and in this great question are parties against you. You are not, however, destitute of every appearance of support; you have all the Jacobites, non-jurors, Roman Catholics, and Tories of this country; and all Scotland, without exception. Considering from what family you are descended, the choice of your friends has been singularly directed; and truly, sir, if you had not lost the Whig interest of England, I should admire your dexterity in turning the hearts of your enemies. Is it possible for you to place any confidence in men who, before they are faithful to you, must renounce every opinion, and betray every principle, both in church and state, which they inherit from their ancestors, and are confirmed in by their education; whose numbers are so inconsiderable, that they have long since been obliged to give up the principles and language which distinguish them as a party, and to fight under the banners of their enemies? Their zeal begins with hypocrisy, and must conclude in treachery. At first they deceive; at last they betray.

As to the Scotch, I must suppose your heart and understanding so biased from your earliest infancy in their favour, that nothing less than your own misfortunes can undeceive you. You will not accept of the uniform experience of your ancestors; and when once a man is determined to believe, the very absurdity of the doctrine confirms him in his faith. A bigoted understanding can draw a proof of attachment to the house of Hanover from a notorious zeal for the

* In the king's speech of 8th November 1768, it was declared 'that the spirit of faction had broken out afresh in some of the colonies, and in one of them proceeded to acts of violence

and resistance to the execution of the laws; that Boston was in a state of disobedience to all law and government, and had proceeded to measures subversive of the constitution, and attended with circumstances that manifested a disposition to

throw off their dependence on Great Britain.'

house of Stuart; and find an earnest of future loyalty in former rebellions. Appearances are, however, in their favour; so strongly, indeed, that one would think they had forgotten that you are their lawful king, and had mistaken you for a pretender to the crown. Let it be admitted, then, that the Scotch are as sincere in their present professions, as if you were in reality not an Englishman, but a Briton of the north; you would not be the first prince of their native country against whom they have rebelled, nor the first whom they have basely betrayed. Have you forgotten, sir, or has your favourite concealed from you, that part of our history when the unhappy Charles (and he, too, had private virtues) fled from the open avowed indig nation of his English subjects, and surrendered himself at discretion to the good faith of his own countrymen? Without looking for support in their affections as subjects, he applied only to their honour as gentlemen for protection. They received him, as they would your majesty, with bows, and smiles, and falsehood; and kept him till they had settled their bargain with the English parliament; then basely sold their native king to the vengeance of his enemies. This, sir, was not the act of a few traitors, but the deliberate treachery of a Scotch parliament, representing the nation. A wise prince might draw from it two lessons of equal utility to himself: on one side he might learn to dread the undisguised resentment of a generous people who dare openly assert their rights, and who in a just cause are ready to meet their sovereign in the field; on the other side he would be taught to apprehend something far more formidablea fawning treachery, against which no prudence can guard, no courage can defend. The insidious smile upon the cheek would warn him of the canker in the heart.

From the uses to which one part of the army has been too frequently applied, you have some reason to expect that there are no services they would refuse. Here, too, we trace the partiality of your understanding. You take the sense of the army from the conduct of the Guards, with the same justice with which you collect the sense of the people from the representations of the ministry. Your marching regiments, sir, will not make the Guards their example either as soldiers or subjects. They feel and resent, as they ought to do, that invariable undistinguishing favour with which the Guards are treated; while those gallant troops, by whom every hazardous, every laborious service is performed, are left to perish in garrisons abroad, or pine in quarters at home, neglected and forgotten. If they had no sense of the great original duty they owe their country, their resentment would operate like patriotism, and leave your cause to be defended by those on whom you have lavished the rewards and honours of their profession. The prætorian bands, enervated and debauched as they were, had still strength enough to awe the Roman populace; but when the distant legions took the alarm, they marched to Rome and gave away the empire.

On this side, then, whichever way you turn your eyes, you see nothing but perplexity and distress. You may determine to support the very ministry who have reduced your affairs to this deplorable situation; you may shelter yourself under the forms of a parliament, and set your people at defiance; but be assured, sir, that such a resolution would be as imprudent as it would be odious. If it did not imme

diately shake your establishment, it would rob you of your peace of mind for ever.

On the other, how different is the prospect! how easy, how safe and honourable is the path before you! The English nation declare they are grossly injured by their representatives, and solicit your majesty to exert your lawful prerogative, and give them an opportunity of recalling a trust which they find has been

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