gument, and violent cenfures without dignity

or moderation."

WILLIAM DRAPER.

LETTER III.

TO SIR WILLIAM DRAPER, KNIGHT OF

THE BATH.

SIR,

7. February, 1769.

YOUR defence of Lord

Granby does honour to the goodness of your heart. You feel, as you ought to do, for the reputation of your friend, and you express yourself in the warmeft language of your paffions. In any other caufe, I doubt not, you would have cautiously weighed the confequences of committing your name to the licentious difcourfes and malignant opinions of the world. But here, I prefume, you thought it would be a breach of friendship to lefe one moment in confulting your understanding; as if an appeal to the public were no more than a military coup de main, where a brave man has no rules to follow, but the dictates of his courage. Touched with your generofity, I freely

for

forgive the exceffes into which it has led you; and, far from refenting those terms of reproach, which, confidering that you are an advocate for decorum, you have heaped upon me rather too liberally, I place them to the account of an honest unreflecting indignation, in which your cooler judgment and natural politeness had no concern. I approve of the fpirit, with which you have given your name to the public; and, if it were a proof of any thing but fpirit, I should have thought myfelf bound to follow your example. I fhould have hoped that even my name might carry fome authority with it, if I had not seen. how very little weight or confideration a printed paper receives even from the respectable fignature of Sir William Draper.

You begin with a general affertion, that writers, fuch as I am, are the real caufe of all the public evils we complain of. And do you really think, Sir William, that the licentious pen of a political writer is able to produce fuch important effects? A little calm reflection might have fhewn you, that national calamities do not arife from the defcription, but from the real character and conduct of minifters. To have supported

your

your affertion, you should have proved that the present ministry are unquestionably the best and brightest characters of the kingdom; and that, if the affections of the colonies have been alienated, if Corfica has been fhamefully abandoned, if commerce languishes, if public credit is threatened with a new debt, and your own Manilla ranfom most dishonourably given up, it has all been owing to the malice of political writers, who will not fuffer the best and brightest of characters (meaning ftill the present ministry) to take a fingle right ftep for the honour or interest of the nation. But it feems you were a little tender of coming to particulars. Your confcience infinuated to you, that it would be prudent to leave the characters of Grafton, North, Hillsborough, Weymouth, and Mansfield, to fhift for themselves; truly, Sir William, the part you have undertaken is at least as much as you are equal to.

and

WITHOUT difputing Lord Granby's courage, we are yet to learn in what articles of military knowledge nature has been so very liberal to his mind. If you have ferved with him, you ought to have pointed out fome inftances of able difpofition and well-concerted

enter

enterprize, which might fairly be attributed to his capacity as a general. It is you, Sir William, who make your friend appear aukward and ridiculous, by giving him a laced fuit of tawdry qualifications, which nature never intended him to wear.

You fay, he has acquired nothing but honour in the field. Is the Ordnance nothing? Are the Blues nothing? Is the command of the army, with all the patronage annexed to it, nothing? Where he got these nothings I know not; but you at leaft ought to have told us where he deferved them.

As to his bounty, compaffion, &c. it would have been but little to the purpose, though you had proved all that you have afferted. I meddle with nothing but his character as commander in chief; and, though I acquit him of the bafenefs of felling commiffions, I ftill affert that his military cares have never extended beyond the difpofal of vacancies and I am justified by the complaints of the whole army, when I fay that, in this diftribution, he confults nothing but parliamentary intereft, or the gratification of his immediate dependants. As to his fervile fub

miffion

miffion to the reigning miniftry, let me afk, whether he did not defert the caufe of the whole army, when he fuffered Sir Jeffery Amherst to be sacrificed, and what share he had in recalling that officer to the service? Did he not betray the juft intereft of the army, in permitting Lord Percy to have a regiment? And does he not at this moment give up all character and dignity as a gentleman, in receding from his own repeated declarations in favour of Mr. Wilkes?

IN the two next articles I think we are agreed. You candidly admit, that he often makes fuch promises as it is a virtue in him to violate, and that no man is more affiduous to provide for his relations at the public expence. I did not urge the last as an abfolute vice in his difpofition, but to prove that a careless difinterested fpirit is no part of his character; and as to the other, I defire it may be remembered, that I never defcended to the indecency of inquiring into his convivial hours. It is you, Sir William Draper, who have taken pains to represent your friend in the character of a drunken landlord, who deals out his promifes as liberally as his liquor, and will fuffer no man to leave his

table