resent. We have reason to thank God, and our ancestors, that there never yet was a minister in this country who could stand the issue of such a conflict; and, with every prejudice in favour of your intentions, I see no such abilities. in your Grace, as should enable you to succeed in an enterprise, in which the ablest and basest of your predecessors have found their destruction. You may continue to deceive your gracious Master with false representations of the temper and condition of his subjects. You may command a venal vote, because it is the common established appendage of your office. But never hope that the freeholders will make a tame surrender of their rights; or, that an English army will join with you, in overturning the liberties of their country. They know, that their first duty, as citizens, is paramount to all subsequent engagements: nor will they prefer the discipline or even the honours, of their pro. fession, to those sacred original rights which belonged to them before they were soldiers, and which they claim and possess as the birthright of Englishmen.

Return, my Lord, before it be too late, to that easy, insipid system 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 persecution. Indulge the people. Attend Newmarket. Mr. Luttrell may again vacate his seat; and Mr. Wilkes, if not persecuted, will soon be forgotten. To be weak and inactive, is safer than to be daring and criminal:

The Duke, about this time, had separated himself from Anne Parsons; but proposed to continue united with her on some platonic terms of friendship, which she rejected with contempt. His baseness to this woman is beyond description, or belief.

and wide is the distance between a riot of the populace and a convulsion of the whole kingdom. You may live to make the experiment, but no honest man can wish you should survive JUNIUS.

it.

LETTER XII.

TO

His Grace the Duke of Grafton.

MY LORD,

May 30, 1769.

IF the measures in which you have been most successful had been supported by any tolerable appearance of argument, I should have thought my time not ill employed in continuing to examine your conduct as a Minister, and stating it fairly to the public. But when I see questions of the highest national importance carried as they have been, and the first principles of the constitution openly violated, without argument or decency, I confess I give up the cause in des. pair. The meanest of your predecessors had abilities sufficient to give a colour to their mea sures. If they invaded the rights of the people, they did not dare to offer a direct insult to their understanding; and, in former times, the most venal Parliaments made it a condition, in their bargain with the Minister, that he should furnish them with some plausible pretences for selling their country and themselves. You have had the merit of introducing a more compen. dious system of government and logic. You neither address yourself to the passions, nor to the understanding, but simply 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 consider your character and conduct, merely as a subject of curious speculation. There is something in both which distinguishes you, not only from all other Ministers, but all other men. It is not that you do wrong by design, but that you should never do right by mistake. It is not that your indolence and your activity have been equally misapplied, but that the first uniform principle, or, if I may call it, the genius of your life, should have carried you through every possible change and contradiction of conduct, without the momentary imputation or colour of a virtue; and that the wildest spirit of inconsistency should never have once betrayed you into a wise or honourable action. This, I own, gives an air of singularity to your fortune, as well as to your disposition. Let us look back, together, to a scene, in which a 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 stood to your Sovereign, your country, your friends, and yourself. Give us, if it be possible, some excuse to posterity, and to ourselves, for submitting to your adminis. tration. If not the abilities of a great minister, if not the integrity of a patriot, or the fidelity of a friend, show us, at least, the firmness of a man. For the sake of your mistress, the lover shall be spared. I will not lead her into public as you have done; nor will I insult the memory of departed beauty. Her sex, which alone made her amiable in your eyes, makes her respectable in mine.

The character of the reputed ancestors of some men, has made it possible for their de

D

scendants to be vicious in the extreme, without being degenerate. Those of your Grace, for instance, left no distressing examples of virtue even to their legitimate posterity: and you may look back with pleasure to an illustrious pedi gree, in which heraldry has not left a single good quality upon record to insult or upbraid you. You have better proofs of your descent, my Lord, than the register of a marriage, or any troublesome inheritance of reputation. There are some hereditary strokes of character, by which a family may be as clearly distinguished, as by the blackest features of the human face, Charles the First lived and died a hypocrite. Charles the Second was a hypocrite of another sort, and should have died upon the same scaf. fold. At the distance of a century, we see their different characters happily revived and blended in your Grace. Sullen and severe, 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 mar. tyr.

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 opposition, he gave you to the world with an air of popula rity, which young men usually set out with, and seldom preserve: grave and plausible enough to be thought fit for business; too young for treachery; and, in short, a patriot of no unpromising expectations. Lord Chatham was the earliest object of your political wonder and attachment; yet you deserted him, upon the first

To understand these passages, the reader is referred to a noted pamphlet, called, the History of the Minority.

hopes that offered of an equal share of power with Lord Rockingham. When the late Duke of Cumberland's first negociation failed, and when the favourite was pushed to the last extremity, you saved him, by joining with an administration, in which Lord Chatham had refused to engage. Still, however, he was your friend: and you are yet to explain to the world, why you consented to act without him; or why, after uniting with Lord Rockingham, you deserted and betrayed him. You complained, that no measures were taken to satisfy your patron; and that your friend, Mr. Wilkes, who had suffered so much for the party, had been abandoned to his fate. They have since contributed, not a little, to your present plenitude of power; yet, I think, Lord Chatham has less reason than ever to be satisfied: and, as for Mr. Wilkes, it is, perhaps, the greatest misfortune of his life, that you should have so many compensations to make in the closet for your former friendship with him. Your gracious Master understands your character, and makes you a persecutor, because you have been a friend.

Lord Chatham formed his last administration upon principles which you certainly concurred in, or you could never have been placed at the head of the treasury. By deserting those principles, and by acting in direct contradiction to them, in which he found you were secretly supported in the closet, you soon forced him to leave you to yourself, and to withdraw his name from an administration which had been formed on the credit of it. You had then a prospect of friendships better suited to your genius, and more likely to fix your disposition. Marriage is the point on which every rake is stationary at last: and truly, my Lord, you may well be weary of the circuit you have taken; for you have now fairly travelled through every sign in the political zodiac, from the scorpion, in