words; and conclude from them, that he is a true and hearty Christian, in substance, not in ceremony; though possibly he may not agree with my Reverend Lords the Bishops, or with the head of the Church, that prayers are moratity, or that kneeling is religion. PHILO JUNIUS. LETTER LVI. FROM THE Reverend Mr. Horne to Junius. August 17, 1771. I CONGRATULATE you, Sir, on the recovery of your wonted style, though it has cost you a fortnight. I compassionate your labour in the composition of your letters, and will communicate to you the secret of my fluency. Truth needs no ornament; and, in my opinion, what she borrows of the pencil is deformity. You brought a positive charge against me of corruption. I denied the charge, and called for your proofs. You replied with abuse, and reasserted your charge. I called again for proofs. You reply again with abuse only, and drop your accusation. In your fortnight's letter, there is not one word upon the subject of my corruption. I have no more to say, but to return thanks to you for your condescension, and to a grateful public, and honest Ministry, for all the favours they have conferred upon me. The two latter, I am sure, will never refuse me any grace I shall solicit: and since you have been pleased to acknowledge, that you told a deliberate lie in my favour, out of bounty, and as a charitable donation, why may I not expect that you will hereafter (if you do not forget you ever mentioned my name with disrespect) make the same acknowledgment for what you have said to my prejudice? This second recantation will, perhaps, be more abhorrent from your disposition; but should you decline it, you will only afford one more instance, how much easier it is to be generous than just, and that men are sometimes bountiful who are not honest. At all events, I am as well satisfied with panegyric as Lord Chatham can be. Monument I shall have none; but over my grave it will be said, in your own words, " Horne's situation did "not correspond with his intentions." JOHN HORNE. LETTER LVII. TO His Grace the Duke of Grafton. September 28, 1771. THE people of England are not apprised of the full extent of their obligations to you. They have yet no adequate idea of the endless variety of your character. They have seen you distinguished and successful in the continued violation of those moral and political duties, by which the little as well as the great societies of life are connected and held together. Every colour, every character became you. With a rate of abilities which Lord Weymouth very justly looks down upon with contempt, you have done as much mischief to the community as Cromwell would have done, if Crom The epitaph would not be ill-suited to the character; at the best, it is but equivocal. well had been a coward; and as much as Machiavel, if Machiavel had not known that an appearance of morals and religion are useful in society. To a thinking man, the influence of the Crown will, in no view, appear so formidable, as when he observes to what enormous excesses it has safely conducted your Grace, without a ray of real understanding, without even the pretensions to common decency or principle of any kind, or a single spark of personal resolution. What must be the operation of that pernicious influence (for which our kings have wisely exchanged the nugatory name of prerogative) that in the highest stations can so abundantly supply the absence of virtue, courage, and abilities, and qualify a man to be the minister of a great nation, whom a private gentleman would be ashamed and afraid to admit into his family! Like the universal passport of an ambassador, it supersedes the prohibition of the laws, banishes the staple virtues of the country, and introduces vice and folly triumphantly into all the departments of the state. Other princes, besides his Majesty, have had the means of corruption within their reach, but they have used it with moderation. In former times, corrup tion was considered as a foreign auxiliary to government, and only called in upon extraor dinary emergencies. The unfeigned piety, the sanctified religion of George the Third, have taught him to new model the civil forces of the state. The natural resources of the Crown are no longer confided in. Corruption glitters in the van, collects and maintains a standing army of mercenaries, and, at the same moment, impoverishes and enslaves the country. His Majesty's predecessors (excepting that worthy family from which you, my Lord, are unquestionably descended) had some generous qualities in their composition, with vices, I confess, or frailties, in abundance. They were kings or gentlemen, not hypocrites or priests. They were at the head of the church, but did not know the value of their office. They said their prayers without ceremony, and had too little priest-craft in their understanding, to reconcile the sanctimonious forms of religion with the atter destruction of the morality of their people. My Lord, this is fact, not declamation. With all your, partiality to the House of Stuart, you must confess that even Charies the Second would have blushed at that open encouragement, at those eager, meretricious caresses, with which every species of private vice and public prostitution is received at St. James's. The unfortunate House of Stuart has been treated with an asperity which, if comparison be a defence, seems to border upon injustice. injustice. Neither Charles, nor his brother, were qualified to support such a system of measures as would be necessary to change the government, and subvert the constitution of England. One of them was too much in earnest in his pleasures, the other in his reli. gion. But the danger to this country would cease to be problematical, if the Crown should ever descend to a prince, whose apparent simplicity might throw his subjects off their guard, who might be no libertine in behaviour, who should have no sense of honour to restrain him, and who, with just religion enough to impose upon the multitude, might have no scruples of conscience to interfere with his morality. With these honourable qualifications, and the decisive. advantage of situation, low craft and falsehood are all the abilities that are wanting to destroy the wisdom of ages, and to deface the noblest monument that human policy has erected.---! know such a man: My Lord, I know you both; and, with the blessing of God (for I, too, am religious) the people of England shall know you as well as I do. I am not very sure that greater abilities would not, in effect, be an impediment to a design which seems, at first sight, to require a superior capacity. A better understanding might make him sensible of the wonderful beauty of that system he was endeavouring to corrupt: the danger of the attempt might alarm him: the meanness and intrinsic worthlessness of the object (supposing he could attain it) would fill him with shame, repentance, and disgust. But these are sensations which find no entrance into a barbarous, contracted heart. In some men there is a malignant passion to destroy the works of genius, literature, and freedom. The Vandal and the monk find equal gratification in it. Reflections like these, my Lord, have a gene. ral relation to your Grace, aud inseparably at. tend you, in whatever company or situation your character occurs to us. They have no immediate connexion with the following recent fact, which I lay before the public, for the honour of the best of Sovereigns, and for the edification of his people. A Prince, (whose piety and self-denial, one would think, might secure him from such a multitude of worldly necessities) with an annual revenue of near a million ster. ling, unfortunately wants money. The navy of England, by an equally strange concurrence of unforeseen circumstances (though not quite so unfortunately for his Majesty) is in equal want of timber. The world knows in what a hopeful condition you delivered the navy to your successor, and in what a condition we found it in the moment of distress. You were determined it should continue in the situation in which you left it. It happened, however, very luckily for the privy purse, that one of the above wants promised fair to supply the other. Our religi ous, benevolent, generous Sovereign has no |