juftify that declaration, wherein you charge your Sovereign with having done an act in your favour notoriously against law. The half-pay, both in Ireland and England, is appropriated by parliament; and if it be given to perfons, who, like you, are legally incapable of holding it, it is a breach of law. It would have been more decent in you to have called this dishonourable tranfaction by its true name; a job to accommodate two perfons, by particular interest and management at the caftle. What sense muft government have had of your services, when the rewards they have given you are only a difgrace to you!

AND now, Sir William, I shall take my leave of you for ever.

Motives very different from any apprehenfion of your resentment, make it impoffible you fhould ever know me. In truth, you have fome reafon to hold yourfelf indebted to me. From the leffons I have given you, you may collect a profitable instruction for your future life. They will either teach you fo to regulate your conduct, as to be able to set the most malicious inquiries at defiance; or, if that be a loft hope, they will teach you prudence

enough

enough not to attract the public attention to a character, which will only pafs without cenfure, when it paffes without obfervation. JUNIUS.

It has been faid, and I believe truly, that it was fignified to Sir William Draper, as the request of Lord Granby, that he fhould defift from writing in his Lordship's defence. Sir William Draper certainly drew Junius forward to say more of Lord Granby's character, than he originally intended. He was reduced to the dilemma of efther being totally filenced, or of fupporting his first letter. Whether Sir William had a right to reduce him to this dilemma, or to call upon him for his name, after a voluntary attack on bis fide, are questions fubmitted to the candor of the public.----The death of Lord Granby was lamented by Junius. He undoubtedly owed fome compenfations to the public, and feemed determined to acquit himfelf of them. In private life, he was unquestionably that good man, who, for the intereft of his country, ought to have been a great one. Bonum virum facilè dixeris ;---magnum libenter. I fpeak of him now without partiality ;---I never spoke of him with refentment. His mistakes, in public conduct, did not arise either from want of fentiment, or want of judgment, but in general from the difficulty of faying No to the bad people, who furrounded him.

As for the reft, the friends of Lord Granby fhould remember, that he himself thought proper to condemn, retract, and difavow, by a moft folemn declaration in the House of Commons, that very system of political conduct, which Junius had held forth, to the disapprobation of the public.

LETTER VIII.

TO THE DUKE OF GRAFTON.

MY LORD,

18. March, 1769.

BEFORE you were placed

at the head of affairs, it had been a maxim of the English government, not unwillingly admitted by the people, that every ungracieus or fevere exertion of the prerogative fhould be placed to the account of the Minifter; but that, whenever an act of grace or benevolence was to be performed, the whole merit of it should be attributed to the Sovereign himself *. It was a wife doctrine, my Lord, and equally advantageous to the King and his subjects; for while it preserved that fufpicious attention, with which the people ought always to examine the conduct of minifters, it tended at the same time rather to increase than diminish their attachment to the perfon of their Sovereign. If there be not a fatality attending every meafure you are concerned in, by what treache

*Les rois ne fe font refervé que les graces. Ils renvoient les condamnations vers leurs officiers.

Montefqureu.

ry,

ry, or by what excess of folly has it happened, that thofe ungracious acts, which have distinguished your administration, and which I doubt not were entirely your own, fhould carry with them a ftrong appearance of perfonal intereft, and even of personal enmity in a quarter, where no fuch interest or enmity can be fuppofed to exift, without the highest injuftice and the highest difhonour? On the other hand, by what judicious management have you contrived it, that the only act of mercy, to which you ever advised your Sovereign, far from adding to the luftre of a character, truly gracious and benevolent, fhould be received with univerfal disapprobation and disgust? I shall confider it as a minifterial measure, because it is an odious one, and as your measure, my Lord Duke, because you are the minister,

As long as the trial of this chairman was depending, it was natural enough that government should give him every poffible encouragement and support. The honourable fervice for which he was hired, and the fpirit with which he performed it, made common caufe between your grace and him. The minifter, who by fecret corruption invades E 3

the

the freedom of elections, and the ruffian, who by open violence deftroys that freedom, are embarked in the fame bottom. They have the fame interefts, and mutually feel for each other. To do juftice to your Grace's humanity, you felt for Mac Quirk as you ought to do, and if you had been contented to affift him indirectly, without a notorious denial of justice, or openly infulting the sense of the nation, you might have fatisfied every duty of political friendship, without committing the honour of your Sovereign, or hazarding the reputation of his government. But when this unhappy man had been folemnly tried, convicted and condemned; when it appeared that he had been frequently employed in the fame fervices, and that no excufe for him could be drawn either from the innocence of his former life, or the fimplicity of his character, was it not hazarding too much to interpofe the ftrength of the prerogative between this felon and the justice of his country? You ought to have known that an example of this fort

was

* Whitehall, March 11, 1769. His Majesty has been graciously pleased to extend his royal mercy to Edward M‘Qurik, found guilty of the murder of George Clarke, as appears by his royal warrant to the tenor following. GEORGE