I seer the sacred person of the sovereign insulted; | would be immortal; and as for your personal charand, in profound peace, and with an undisputed acter, I will not, for the honor of human nature, title, the fidelity of his subjects brought by his suppose that you can wish to have it rememown servants into public question.14 Without bered. The condition of the present times is abilities, resolution, or interest, you have done desperate indeed; but there is a debt due to more than Lord Bute could accomplish with all those who come after us, and it is the historian's Scotland at his heels office to punish, though he can not correct. do not give you to posterity as a pattern to im. itate, but as an example to deter; and as your conduct comprehends every thing that a wise or honest minister should avoid, I mean to make you a negative instruction to your successors forever. JUNIUS. Your Grace, little anxious, perhaps, either for present or future reputation, will not desire to be handed down in these colors to posterity. You have reason to flatter yourself that the memory of your administration will survive even the forms of a constitution which our ancestors vainly hoped LETTER TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF GRAFTON.1 measures, the virulent exaggeration of party must be employed to rouse and engage the passions of the people. You have now brought the merits of your administration to an issue, on which every Englishman, of the narrowest capacity. may determine for himself. It is not an alarm to the passions, but a calm appeal to the judgment of the people upon their own most essential interests. A more experienced minister would not have hazarded a direct invasion of the first principles of the Constitution, before he had made some progress in subduing the spirit of the people. With such a cause as yours, my Lord, it is not sufficient that you have the court at your devotion, unless you can find means to corrupt or intimidate the jury. The collective body of the people form that jury, and from their decis ion there is but one appeal. MY LORD,-If nature had given you an understanding qualified to keep pace with the wishes and principles of your heart, she would have made you, perhaps, the most formidable minister that ever was employed, under a limited monarch, to accomplish the ruin of a free people. When neither the feelings of shame, the reproaches of conscience, nor the dread of punishment, form any bar to the designs of a minister, the people would have too much reason to lament their condition, if they did not find some resource in the weakness of his understanding. We owe it to the bounty of Providence, that the completest depravity of the heart is sometimes strangely united with a confusion of the mind, which counteracts the most favorite principles, and makes the same man treacherous without art, and a hypocrite without deceiving. The measures, for instance, in which your Grace's Whether you have talents to support you at activity has been chic fly exerted, as they were a crisis of such difficulty and danger, should long adopted without skill, should have been conduct- since have been considered. Judging truly of ed with more than common dexterity. But your disposition, you have perhaps mistaken the truly, my Lord, the execution has been as gross extent of your capacity. Good faith and folly as the design. By one decisive step you have have so long been received as synonymous terms, defeated all the arts of writing. You have fair- that the reverse of the proposition has grown ly confounded the intrigues of Opposition, and si- into credit, and every villain fancies himself a lenced the clamors of faction. A dark, ambig-man of abilities. It is the apprehension of your gous system might require and furnish the materials of ingenious illustration, and, in doubtful Dated July 8th, 1769. This Letter is directed chiefly to one point-the daring step just taken by the ministry, of seating Mr. Luttrell in the House of Commons to the exclusion of Mr. Wilkes, when the former had received only 296 votes, and the latte 1143 votes, and had been returned by the sheriff of Middlesex as the elected member. Junius does not enter into the argument, for the case was too clear to admit of extended reasoning. His object was to Sonvince the King and the ministry, that the people wild not endure so flagrant an act of violence. friends, my Lord, that you have drawn some hasty conclusion of this sort, and that a partial reliance upon your moral character has betrayed you beyond the depth of your understanding. You have now carried things too far to retreat. You have plainly declared to the people what they are to expect from the continuance of your administration. It is time for your Grace to consider what you also may expect in return from their spirit and their resentment. Since the accession of our most gracious sovereign to the throne, we have seen a system of government which may well be called a reign of experiments. Parties of all denominations have been employed and dismissed. The advice of the ablest men in this country has been repeatedly called for and rejected; and when the roval displeasure has been signified to a minister, the marks of it have usually been proportioned to his abilities and integrity. The spirit of the FA VORITE ual some apparent influence upon every administration; and every set of ministers preserved an appearance of duration as long as they submitted to that influence. But there were 2 If the reader wishes to understand the true state of parties at this time, and the real merits of the so certain services to be performed for the Favor ite's security, or to gratify his resentments which your predecessors in office had the wisdom or the virtue not to undertake. The moment this refractory spirit was discovered, their disgrace was determined. Lord Chatham, Mr Grenville, and Lord Rockingham have success much agitated question of favoritism, he will be aid-ively had the honor to be dismissed, for prefered by a consideration of the following facts: William III. was placed on the throne in the rev-ring their duty, as servants of the public, to those olution of 1688, by a union of the great Whig families; and his successors were held there against the efforts of the Jacobites by the same power. Hence the government of the country "on Revolution principles," so often spoken of, was really, to a great extent, the government of the King himself as well as the country, by a union of these families power ful enough to control Parliament. Junius has very graphically described, in the preceding Letter, the process by which George II., "under the happy influence of a connection between his ministers, was relieved of the cares of government." When George III. came to the throne, he determined to break away from these shackles, and to rule according to his own views and feelings, selecting such men from compliances which were expected from their station. A submissive administration was at last gradually collected from the deserters of all parties, interests, and connections; and nothing remained but to find a leader for these gallant, well-disciplined troops. Stand forth, my Lord, for thou art the man! Lord Bute found no resource of dependence or security in the proud, imposing superiority of Lord Chatham's abilities, the shrewd, inflexible judgment of Mr. Grenville, nor in the mild but determined integrity of Lord Rockingham. His views and situation required a creature void of all these properties; and he was forced to go through every division, resoall parties as he considered best fitted to adminis-lution, composition, and refinement of political ter the government. If he had thrown himself into the hands of Lord Chatham for the accomplishment of this design, he would probably have succeeded. That great statesman, by the splendor of his abili ties, and his unbounded influence with the body of the people, might have raised up a counterpoise against the weight of those great family combinations in the peerage. But George III. disliked the Great Commoner, and had no resource but his ear ly friend, Lord Bute. But this nobleman had neither the abilities nor the political influence which were necessary for the accomplishment of such a scheme. As a Scotchman, particularly, he had to encounter the bitterest jealousy of the English. After a brief effort to administer the government, he gave up the attempt in despair. Still, there was a wide-spread suspicion that he maintained an undue influence over the King by secret advice and interIt seems now to be settled, however, that such was not the fact. The complaint of his continuing to rule as Favorite, is now admitted to have been chiefly or wholly unfounded. But the King, if he persevered in his plan, must have some agents and advisers. Hence, it was maintained by Mr. Burke, in his celebrated pamphlet entitled Thoughts on tho Present Discontents, that there was a regular organization, a "cabinet behind the throne," which overruled the measures of the ostensible ministry. Such, substantially, were the views of Junius, though he chose to give prominence to Lord Bute as most hated by the people. He represents one ministry after another to have been sacrificed through the influence of his Lordship. He treats the Duke of Grafton as the willing tool of this system of favoritism. All this was greatly exaggerated. Private influence did probably exist to a limited extent; but the King's frequent changes of ministers resulted partly from personal disgust, and partly from his inability to carry on the government ¡ without calling in new strength. The great Whig families, in the mean time, felt indignant at these attempts of the King to free himself from their control. Junius represented the feelings of these men ; and there was much less of real patriotism in his attack on the King than he pretends. It was a struggle for power. "There were many." says an able writer, "among the Whig party, who rejoiced at the course. chemistry, before he happily arrived at the capul nghts of the pecpie. But these are rights, my | House of Commc is must declare themselves not Lord, which you can no more annihilate than you can the soil to which they are annexed. The question no onger turns upon points of national honor and security abroad, or on the degrees of expediency and propriety of measures at home. It was not inconsistent that you should abandon the cause of liberty in another country Corsica], which you had persecuted in your own; and in the common arts of domestic corruption, we miss no part of Sir Robert Walpole's system except his abilities. In this humble, imitative line you might long have proceeded, safe and contemptible. You might probably never have risen to the dignity of being hated, and you might even have been despised with moderation. But, it seems, you meant to be distinguished; and to a mind like yours there was no other road to fame but by the destruction of a noble fabric, which you thought had been too long the admiration of mankind. The use you have made of the military force, introduced an alarming change in the mode of executing the laws. The arbitrary appointment of Mr. Luttrell invades the foundation of the laws themselves, as it manifestly transfers the right of legislation from those whom the people have chosen to those whom they have rejected. With a succession of such appointdents, we may soon see a House of Commons collected, in the choice of which the other towns and counties of England will have as little share as the devoted county of Middlesex. only independent of their constituents, but the determined enemies of the Constitution. Consider, my Lord, whether this be an extremity to which their fears will permit them to advance; or, if their protection should fail you, how far you are authorized to rely upon the sincerity of those smiles, which a pious court lavishes without reluctance upon a libertine by profession. It is not, indeed, the least of the thousand contradictions which attend you, that a man, marked to the world by the grossest violation of all ceremony and decorum, should be the first servant of a court, in which prayers are morality, and kneeling is religion.3 Trust not too far to appearances, by which your predecessors have been deceived, though they have not been injured. Even the best of princes may at last discover that this is a contention in which every thing may be lost, but nothing can be gained; and, as you became minister by accident, were adopted without choice, and continued without favor, be assured that, whenever an occasion presses, you will be discarded without even the forms of re gret. You will then have reason to be thankful if you are permitted to retire to that seat of learning, which, in contemplation of the system of your life, the comparative purity of your manners with those of their high steward [Lord Sandwich], and a thousand other recommending circumstances, has chosen you to encourage the growing virtue of their youth, and to preside over their education. Whenever the spirit of distributing prebends and bishoprics shall have departed from you, you will find that learned seminary perfectly recovered from the delirium of an installation, and, what in truth it ought tc be, once more a peaceful scene of slumber and meditation. The venerable tutors of the university will no longer distress your inodesty by proposing you for a pattern to their pupils. The learned dullness of declamation will be silent; and even the venal muse, though happiest in fic. tion, will forget your virtues. Yet, for the benefit of the succeeding age, I could wish that your retreat might be deferred until your morals shall happily be ripened to that maturity of corruption at which, philosophers tell us, the worst exani Yet I trust your Grace will find that the people of this country are neither to be intimidated by violent measures, nor deceived by refinement. When they see Mr. Luttrell seated in the House of Commons by mere dint of power, and in direct opposition to the choice of a whole coumy, they will not listen to those subtleties by which every arbitrary exertion of authority is explained into the law and privilege of Parliament. It requires no persuasion of argument, but simply the evidence of the senses, to convince them, that to transfer the right of election from the collective to the representative body of the people, contradiets all those ideas of a House of Commons which they have received from their forefathers, and which they had already, though vainly, perhaps, delivered to their children. The principles cease to be contagious. ples on which this violent measure has been defended have added scorn to injury, and forced us to feel that we are not only oppressed, but in sulted. With what force, my Lord, with what protection, are you prepared to meet the united detestation of the people of England? The city of London has given a generous example to the kingdom, in what manner a King of this country ought to be addressed; and I fancy, my Lord, it is not yet in your courage to stand between your sovereign and the addresses of his subjects. The injuries you have done this country are such as demand not only redress, but vengeance. In vain shall you look for protection to that venal vote which you have already paid for another must be purchased; and, to save a minister, the JUNIUS. 3 This attack on the moral and religious character of the King was wholly unmerited. A sovereign can not always find ministers able to carry on the government, whose private character he approves. George III. had no grimace in his religion; he was sincere and conscientious; and he at last wrought a surprising change in the outward morals of the higher classes, by the purity of his own household. All England has borne testimony to the wide-spread and powerful influence of his reign in this respect. The Duke of Grafton had recently been installed Chancellor of the University of Cambridge with great Hence! avaunt! 'tis hy ground! LETTER TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF BEDFORD.1 MY LOR,-You are so little accustomed to of your established character, and perhaps receive any marks of respect or esteem from the insult to your understanding. You have nice public, that if, in the following lines, a compli- feelings, my Lord, if we may judge from your ment or expression of applause should escape resentments. Cautious, therefore, of giving of. me, I fear you would consider it as a mockery fense, where you have so little deserved it, I 1 Dated September 19th, 1769. The Bedford fam- shall leave the illustration of your virtues to ily was at this time the richest in England, and, other hands. Your friends have a privilege to through its borough interest and wide-spread alli-play upon the easiness of your temper, or posances, stood foremost in political influence. The present Duke was now sixty years old, and had spent half his life in the conflicts of party. He first held office under Lord Carteret, then under Mr. Pelham, and was made Viceroy of Ireland by Lord Chatham in his first administration. Thus far he had acted as a Whig. But when Lord Bute drove out Lord sibly they are better acquainted with your good qualities than I am. You have done good by stealth. The rest is upon record. You have still left ample room for speculation, when panegyric is exhausted. The You are indeed a very considerable man. Chatham in 1761, he took the office of Privy Seal, highest rank, a splendid fortune, and a name, glomade vacant by the resignation of Chatham's broth-rious till it was yours, were sufficient to have super-in-law. Lord Temple, and was now considered as ported you with meaner abilities than I think you uniting his interests to those of the Favorite. When possess. From the first, you derived a constituLord Bute resigned in 1763, the influence of the tional claim to respect; from the second, a natu Duke became ascendant in the cabinet, and the ad- ral extensive authority; the last created a partial ministration, though ostensibly that of Mr. Gren- expectation of hereditary virtues. The use you ville, has often been spoken of as the Duke of Bed- have made of these uncommon advantages might ford's. It was extremely unpopular, from the gen. have been more honorable to yourself, but could eral belief that Lord Bute still ruled as Favorite; We may not be more instructive to mankind. trace it in the veneration of your country, in the choice of your friends, and in the accomplishment of every sanguine hope which the public might have conceived from the illustrious name of Russell. and in 1765 it gave way to the administration of Lord Rockingham, which threw the Duke of Bedford wholly into the back-ground. The Duke of Grafton, when he became minister in 1767, through the illness of Lord Chatham and the death of Charles Townsend, found it necessary to call in new strength, and opened negotiations, as already mentioned, with Lord Rockingham on the one hand and the Duke of Bedford on the other. The Rockingham Whigs had the strongest hopes of prevailing in these new ar rangements, and of being made virtual masters of the government. But the influence of the Duke of Bedford prevailed. Three of his dependents, Lords Weymouth, Gower, and Sandwich, were received into the ministry; and the Duke of Bedford drew upon himself the bitterest resentment of the Rockingham Whigs for thus depriving them of power, and becoming, as they conceived, the savior of Lord Bute and the Tories, and thus re-establishing the system of secret influence in the closet. These events, The eminence of your station gave you a com manding prospect of your duty. The road, which led to honor, was open to your view You could not lose it by mistake, and you had no temptation to depart from it by design. Compare the natural dignity and importance of the richest peer of England; the noble independence which he might have maintained in Parliament; and the real interest and respect which he might have acquired, not only in Parliament, but through the whole kingdom; compare these glorious distinctions with the ambition of holding a share in government, the emoluments of a place, as stated above, were the immediate cause which led the writer of these Letters to come out under a the sale of a borough, or the purchase of a cornew signature, and in a bolder style of attack. Aft-poration; and, though you may not regret the er assailing the Duke of Grafton, as we have seen in the preceding letters, he now turns upon the Duke of Bedford in a spirit of still fiercer resentment. He reviews the whole public and private conduct of his Grace, and endeavors to call up all the odium of past transactions to enkindle new jealousies against him, as about to give increased effect to a system of favoritism in the closet; and seeks at the same time to overwhelm the Duke himself with a sense of dishonor, baseness, and folly, which might make him shrink from the public eye. There is nothing in all the writings of Junius that is more vehemently eloquent than the close of this letter. It is proper to add, that this eloquence is, in far too many cases, un supported by facts. virtues which create respect, you may see, with anguish, how much real importance and authority you have lost. Consider the character of an independent, virtuous Duke of Bedford; imagine 2 This and the next three paragraphs are among the finest specimens of composition to be found in Junius. Nowhere has he made so happy a use of contrast. Commencing with a natural and expressive image, he first sketches with admirable discrimination the character and conduct to be expected in the first peer of England, and then sets off against it an artful and exaggerated representation of the political errors and private weaknesses of the Duke of Bedford during the preceding thirty years what he might be in this country, then reflect one moment upon what you are. If it be possible for me to withdraw my attention from the fact, I will tell you in theory what such a man might be. long life, have invariably chosen his friends from among the most profligate of mankind. His own honor would have forbidden him from mixing his private pleasures or conversation with jockeys, gamesters, blasphemers, gladiators, or buffoons. Conscious of his own weight and importance, He would then have never felt, much less would his conduct in Parliament would be directed by he have submitted to the dishonest necessity of nothing but the constitutional duty of a peer. engaging in the interests and intrigues of his de He would consider himself as a guardian of the pendents-of supplying their vices, or relieving laws. Willing to support the just measures of their beggary at the expense of his country. government, but determined to observe the con- He would not have betrayed such ignorance or duct of the minister with suspicion, he would op- such contempt of the Constitution as openly to yose the violence of faction with as much firm- avow, in a court of justice, the purchase and sale ness as the encroachments of prerogative. He of a borough." He would not have thought it would be as little capable of bargaining with the consistent with his rank in the state, or even minister for places for himself or his dependents, with his personal importance, to be the little tyas of descending to mix himself in the intrigues rant of a little corporation. He would never of Opposition. Whenever an important ques- have been insulted with virtues which he had tion called for his opinion in Parliament, he would labored to extinguish, nor suffered the disgrace be beard, by the most profligate minister, with of a mortifying defeat, which has made him rideference and respect. His authority would ei- diculous and contemptible, even to the few by ther sanctify or disgrace the measures of govern- whom he was not detested. I reverence the The people would look up to him as to afflictions of a good man-his sorrows are sa their protector, and a virtuous prince would have cred. But how can we take part in the dis one honest man in his dominions, in whose in- tresses of a man whom we can neither love not tegrity and judgment he might safely confide. esteem, or feel for a calamity of which he himIf it should be the will of Providence to afflict self is insensible? Where was the father's him with a domestic misfortune, he would sub-heart when he could look for, or find an imme. mit to the stroke with feeling, but not without dignity. He would consider the people as his children, and receive a generous, heart-felt consolation in the sympathizing tears and blessings of his country. ment. diate consolation for the loss of an only son in consultations and bargains for a place at court, and even in the misery of balloting at the India House ?? Admitting, then, that you have mistaken or Your Grace may probably discover something deserted those honorable principles which ought more intelligible in the negative part of this il- to have directed your conduct; admitting that lustrious character. The man I have described you have as little claim to private affection as to would never prostitute his dignity in Parliament public esteem, let us see with what abilities, by an indecent violence either in opposing or de- with what degree of judgment you have carried fending a minister. He would not at one mo- your own system into execution. A great man, ment rancorously persecute, at another basely in the success, and even in the magnitude of his cringe to the Favorite of his sovereign. After crimes, finds a rescue from contempt. Your outraging the royal dignity with peremptory Grace is every way unfortunate. Yet I will not conditions, little short of menace and hostility, look back to those ridiculous scenes, by which, he would never descend to the humility of solicit- in your earlier days, you thought it an honor to ing an interview with the Favorite, and of offer- be distinguished; the recorded stripes, the pubng to recover, at any price, the honor of his lie infamy, your own sufferings, or Mr. Rigby's friendship. Though deceived, perhaps, in his fortitude. These events undoubtedly left an imyouth, he would not, through the course of a who had so basely betrayed him.", Horace Wal 'The Duke had lately lost his only son, Lord Tav-pole confirms this statement. istock, by a fall from his horse. There is great beauty in the turn of the next sentence, "he would consider the people as his children," which might well be done by a descendant of Lord William Russell, whose memory was venerated by the people as a martyr in the cause of liberty. This thought gives double severity to the contrast that follows, in which the character and conduct of the Duke are presented in such a light, that, instead of being able to repose his sorrows on the bosom of the people, he had made himself an object of their aversion or contempt. As to the justice of these insinuations respecting a want of feeling" and "dignity" under this calamity, see the remarks at the end of this Letter. 5 This he did in an answer in Chancery, when sued for a large sum paid him by a gentleman, whom he had undertaken (but failed) to return as a mem ber of Parliament. He was obliged to refund the money. It is stated in a note by Junius. "At this interview, which passed at the house of the late Lord Eglintoan, Lord Bute told the Duke that he was de Red never to have any conrection with a man The town of Bedford had been greatly exasper ated by the overbearing disposition of the Duke. To deliver themselves from the thraldom in which he had held them, they admitted a great number of strangers to the freedom of the corporation, and the Duke was defeated. As to the justice of this cruel attack, see the remarks at the end of the present Letter. Note by Junius. "Mr. Heston Humphrey, a coun try attorney, horse whipped the Duke, with equal' justice, severity, and perseverance, on the course at Litchfield. Rigby and Lord Trentham were also cudgeled in a most exemplary manner. This gave |