Produce your authorities to the public. It is a most impudent kind of forcery to attempt to blind us with the smoke, without convincing us that the fire has exifted. You firft brand him with a vice that he is free from, to render him odious and. suspected.. Sufpicion is the foul weapon with which you make all your chief attacks; with that you ftab. But fhall one of the first fubjects of the realm be ruined in his fame; fhall even his life be in conftant danger, from a charge built upon fuch fandy foundations? Muft hist house be befieged by lawless ruffians, his journies impeded, and even the afylum of an altar be infecure, from affertions fo bafe and falfe? Potent as he is, the Duke is amenable to justice; if guilty, punishable. The parliament is the high and folemn tribunal for matters of fuch great moment. To that be they fubmitted. But I hope alfo that fome notice will be taken of, and fome punishment inflicted upon, falfe accufers, efpecially upon fuch, Junius, who are wilfully falfe. In any truth I will agree even with Junius; will agree with him that it is highly unbecoming the dignity of Peers to tamper with boroughs. Ariftocracy is as fatal as democracy. Our conftitution admits of neither.

It loves a King, Lords, and Commons really chofen by the unbought fuffrages of a free people. But if corruption on

ly

ly fhifts hands; if the wealthy commoner gives the bribe, instead of the potent Peer, is the state better ferved by this exchange? Is the real emancipation of the borough effected, because new parchment bonds may poffibly superfede the old? To say the truth, whereever fuch practices prevail, they are equally criminal to and deftructive of our freedom.

THE rest of your declamation is scarce worth confidering, excepting for the elegance of the language. Like Hamlet in the play, you produce two pictures; you tell us, that one is not like the Duke of Bedford: then you bring a moft hideous caricatura, and tell us of the refemblance; but multum abludit imago.

ALL your long tedious accounts of the minifterial quarrels, and the intrigues of the cabinet, are reducible to a few fhort lines; and to convince you, Sir, that I do not mean to flatter any minifter, either past or present, thefe are my thoughts: they seem to have acted like lovers, or children; have pouted, quarrelled, cried, kiffed, and been friends again, as the objects of defire, the ministerial rattles *, have been put into their hands. But

fuch

*SIR WILLIAM's own account of the behaviour of the Duke and his friends, the men, according to him the bek

fuch proccedings are very unworthy of the gravity and dignity of a great nation. We do not want men of abilities; but we have wanted fteadiness; we want unanimity: your letters, Junius, will not contribute thereto. You may one day expire by a flame of your own kindling. But it is my humble opinion that lenity and moderation, pardon and oblivion, will disappoint the efforts of all the feditious in the land, and extinguish their wide fpreading fires. I have lived with this fentiment; with this I fhall die.

WILLIAM DRAPER.

IF

I

F Sir William Draper's bed be a bed of torture, he has made it for himself. shall never interrupt his repofe.

Having

changed the subject, there are parts of his laft letter not undeferving of a reply. Leav ing his private character and conduct out of the question, I shall confider him merely in

beft qualified to govern the empire, fhews them in a light perfectly ridiculous.

the

the capacity of an author, whose labours certainly do no difcredit to a news-paper.

WE fay, in common difcourfe, that a man may be his own enemy, and the frequency of the fact makes the expreffion intelligible. But that a man fhould be the bitterest enemy of his friends, implies a contradiction of a peculiar nature There is fomething in it, which cannot be conceived without a confufion of ideas, nor expreffed without a folecism in language. Sir William Draper is still that fatal friend Lord Granby found him. Yet I am ready to do justice to his generofity; if indeed it be not fomething more than generous, to be the voluntary advocate of men, who think themselves injured by his affiftance, and to confider nothing in the cause he adopts, but the difficulty of defending it. I thought however he had been better read in the history of the human heart, than to compare or confound the tortures of the body with those of the mind. He ought to have known, though perhaps it might not be his intereft to confefs, that no outward tyranny can reach the mind. If confcience plays the tyrant, it would be greatly for the benefit of the world that the were more arbitrary, and far lefs placable, than some men find her.

Βυτ

BUT it feems I have outraged the feelings of a father's heart.-Am I indeed fo injudicious? Does Sir William Draper think I would have hazarded my credit with a generous nation, by fo grofs a violation of the laws of humanity? Does he think I am fo little acquainted with the firft and noblest characteristic of Englishmen? Or how will he reconcile fuch folly with an understanding fo full of artifice as mine? Had he been a father, he would have been but little offended with the severity of the reproach, for his mind would have been filled with the justice of it. He would have seen that I did not infult the feelings of a father, but the father who felt nothing. He would have trusted to the evidence of his own paternal heart, and boldly denied the poffibility of the fact, inftead of defending it. Against whom then will his honeft indignation be directed, when I affure him, that this whole town beheld the Duke of Bedford's conduct, upon the death of his fon, with horror and astonishment. Sir William Draper does himself but little honour in oppofing the general sense of his country. The people are seldom wrong in their opinions,-in their fentiments they are never mistaken. There may be a vanity perhaps in a fingular way of thinking; -but when a man profeffes a want of those feelings, which do honour to the multitude,

he