the public liberty is affected, and which you may hereafter, with equal ease and fatisfaction, employ to the ruin of the beft men in the kingdom.

Content yourself, my Lord, with the many advantages which the unfullied purity of your own character has given you over your unhappy deferted friend. Avail yourself of all the unforgiving piety of the court you live in, and blefs God that ઃઃ you are not as other men are; extortioners, unjuft, adulterers, or even as this publican." In a heart void of feeling, the laws of honour and good faith may be violated with impunity; and there you may fafely indulge your genius. But the laws of England fhall not be violated, even by your holy zeal to opprefs a finner; and though you have fucceeded in making him the tool, you fhall not make him the victim of your ambition.

THE

nius is not the lefs poetical for being founded on a fiction. In fome parts of it there is a promife of genius, which deferves to be encouraged. My letter of Monday will, I hope, convince the author that I am neither a partifan of Mr. Wilkes, or yet bought off by the miniftry. It is true I

have refused offers which a more prudent or a more interested man would have accepted. Whether it be fimplicity or virtue in me, I can only affirm that I am in earnest, because I am convinced, as far as my understanding is capable of judging, that the present ministry are driving this country to deftruction; and you, I think, Sir, may be fatisfied that my rank and fortune place me above a common bribe.

JUNIUS.

LETTER XII.

To Mr. EDWARD WESTON.

SIR,

April 21, 1769. Said you were an old man without the benefit

of experience. It feems you are also a volunteer with the ftipend of twenty commiffions; and at a period when all profpects are at an end, you are ftill looking forward to rewards, which you cannot enjoy. No man is better acquainted with the bounty of government than you are.

-ton impudence,

Temeraire vieillard, aura fa recompenfe.

But I will not defcend to an altercation either with the impotence of your age, or the peevishness your difeafes. Your pamphlet, ingenious as it is, has been fo little read, that the public cannot

of

know

?

*

know how far you have a right to give me the lye, without the following citation of your own words.

Page 6. 1. That he is perfuaded that the motives, which he (Mr. Wefton) has alledged, must appear fully fufficient, with or without the opinions of the furgeons.

2. That thofe very motives MUST HAVE BEEN the foundation on which the Earl of Rochford thought proper, &c.

6

3. That he CANNOT BUT REGRET that the Earl of Rochford feems to have thought proper to lay the chirurgical reports before the King, in preference to all the other fufficient motives,' &c.

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

own.

The ftile and language you have adopted are,' I confefs, not ill fuited to the elegance of your own manners, or to the dignity of the cause you have undertaken. Every common dauber writes rafcal and villain under his pictures, because the pictures themselves have neither character nor refemblance. But the works of a mafter require no index. His features and colouring are taken from nature. The impreffion they make is immediate and uniform; nor is it poffible to miftake his characters, whether they reprefent the treachery

treachery of a minifter, or the abused fimplicity of

THE fyftem you seemed to have adopted,

when Lord Chatham unexpectedly left you at the head of affairs, gave us no promife of that uncommon exertion of vigour, which has finçe illustrated your character and diftinguished your administration. Far from difcovering a spirit bold enough to invade the first rights of the people, and the first principles of the conftitution, you were scrupulous of exercising even those powers, with which the executive branch of the legislature is legally invested. We have not yet forgotten how long Mr. Wilkes was fuffered to appear at large, nor how long he was at liberty to canvass for the city and county, with all the terrors of an outlawry hanging over him. Our gracious fovereign has not yet forgotten the extraordinary care you took of his dignity, and of the safety of his perfon, when, at a crifis which courtiers affected to call alarming, you left the metropolis expofed for two nights together, to every fpecies of riot and disorder. The fecurity of the royal refidence from infult was then fufficiently provided for in

Mr.

Mr. Conway's firmnefs and Lord Weymouth's dif cretion; while the prime minister of Great Britain, in a rural retirement, and in the arms of a faded beauty, had loft all memory of his sovereign, his country and himself. In these inftances you might have acted with vigour, for you would have had the fanction of the laws to fupport you. The friends of government might have defended you without shame, and moderate men, who wish well to the peace and good order of society, might have had a pretence for applauding your conduct. But these it seems were not occafions worthy of your Grace's interpofition. You reserved the proofs of your intrepid spirit for trials of greater hazard and importance; and now, as if the most disgraceful relaxation of the executive authority had given you a claim of credit to indulge in exceffes ftill more dangerous, you feemed determined to compenfate amply for your former negligence? and to balance the non-execution of the laws with a breach of the conftitution. From one extreme you fuddenly start to the other, without leaving between the weakness and the fury of the paffions, one moment's interval for the firmness of the unstanding.

Thefe obfervations, general as they are, might eafily be extended into a faithful hiftory of your Grace's adminiftration, and perhaps may be the employ