RETURN, my Lord, before it be too late, to that eafy infipid fyftem, which you first set out with. Take back your mistress; * the name of friend may be fatal to her, for it leads to treachery and perfecution. Indulge the people. Attend Newmarket. Mr. Luttrell may again vacate his feat; and Mr. Wilkes, if not perfecuted, will foon be forgotten. To be weak and inactive is fafer than to be daring and criminal; and wide is the distance between a riot of the populace and a convulfion of the whole kingdom. You may live to make the experiment, but no honeft man can with you fhould furvive it.

J

JUNIUS.

* The Duke, about this time, had feparated himself from Ann Parfons, but propofed to continue united with her, on fome platonic terms of friendship, which the rejected with contempt. His bafeness to this woman is beyond defcription or belief.

LET.

LETTER

XII.

TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF GRAFTON.

MY LORD,

30. May, 1769.

IF the meafures in which you

have been most fuccessful, had been supported by any tolerable appearance of argument, I fhould have thought my time not ill employed, in continuing to examine your conduct as a minifter, and ftating it fairly to the public. But when I fee queftions, of the highest national importance, carried as they have been, and the first principles of the conftitution openly violated, without argument or decency, I confefs, I give up the cause in defpair. The meanest of your predeceffors had abilities fufficient to give a colour to their measures. If they invaded the rights of the people, they did not dare to offer a direct infult to their understanding; and, in former times, the most venal parliaments made it a condition, in their bargain with the minifter, that he fhould furnish them. with fome plaufible pretences for felling their country and themfelves. You have had the

merit

merit of introducing a more compendious system of government and logic. You neither address yourself to the paffions, nor to the understanding, but fimply to the touch. You apply yourself immediately to the feelings of your friends, who, contrary to the forms of parliament, never enter heartily into a debate, until they have divided.

RELINQUISHING, therefore, all idle views of amendment to your Grace, or of benefit to the public, let me be permitted to confider your character and conduct merely as a fubject of curious fpeculation.-There is fomething in both, which distinguishes you not only from all other, minifters, but all other men. It is not that you do wrong by defign, but that you should never do right by mistake. It is not that your indolence and your activity have been equally mifapplied, but that the first uniform principle, or, if I may call it the genius of your life, fhould have carried you through every poffible change and contradiction of conduct, without the momentary imputation or colour of a virtus; and that the wildeft fpirit of inconfiftency fhould never once have betrayed you into a wife or honourable action. This,

I own, gives an air of fingularity to your fortune, as well as to your difpofition. Let us look back together to a scene, in which à mind like yours will find nothing to repent of. Let us try, my Lord, how well you have supported the various relations in which you flood, to your fovereign, your country, your friends, and yourfelf. Give us, if it be poffible, fome excuse to pofterity, and to ourselves, for fubmitting to your administration. If not the abilities of a great minifter, if not the integrity of a patriot, or the fidelity of a friend, fhew us, at leaft the firmness of a man.-For the fake of your miftrefs, the lover fhall be fpared. I will not lead her into public, as you have done, nor will I infult the memory of departed beauty. Her fex, which alone made her amiable in your eyes, makes her refpectable in mine.

THE character of the reputed ancestors of fome men, has made it poffible for their defcendants to be vicious in the extreme, without being degenerate. Thofe of your Grace, for inftance, left no diftreffing examples of virtue, even to their legitimate pofterity, and you may look back with pleasure to an illuftrious pedigree, in which heraldry has not

left

left a fingle good quality upon record to înfult or upbraid you. You have better proofs of your defcent, my Lord, than the register of a marriage, or any troublesome inheritance of reputation. There are some heredi tary strokes of character, by which a family may be as clearly diftinguished as by the blackeft features of the human face. Charles the First lived and died a hypocrite. Charles the Second was a hypocrite of another fort, and should have died upon the fame feaffold. At the distance of a century, we fee their different characters happily revived, and blended in your Grace. Sullen and fevere without religion, profligate without gaiety, 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..

You had already taken your degrees with: credit in those schools, in which the English nobility are formed to virtue, when you were introduced to Lord Chatham's protection *. From Newmarket, White's, and the oppofition, he gave you to the world

To understand thefe paffages, the reader is referred to a noted pamphlet, called, The hiftory of the minority.