DEDICATION

TO THE

ENGLISH NATION.

I DEDICATE to You a collection of Letters, written by one of Yourselves for the common benefit of us all. They would never have grown to this size, without Your continued encouragement and applause*. To me they originally owe nothing, but a healthy, sanguine constitution. Under Your care they have thriven. To You they are indebted for whatever strength or beauty they possess. When Kings and Ministers are forgotten, when the force and direction of personal satire is no longer under

*See Private Letters, No. 5. in which the author, shortly after his appearance before the public under the signature of JUNIUS, expresses an intention to discontinue writing under that name; nor would he in all probability have persevered, but for the reason assigned above.

EDIT.

stood, and when measures are only felt in their remotest consequences, this book will, I believe, be found to contain principles, worthy to be transmitted to posterity. When You leave the unimpaired, hereditary freehold to Your children, You do but half Your duty. Both liberty and property are precarious, unless the possessors have sense and spirit enough to defend them. This is not the language of vanity. If I am a vain man, my gratification lies within a narrow circle. I am the sole depositary of my own secret, and it shall perish with me*.

If an honest, and, I may truly affirm, a laborious zeal for the public service has given me any weight in Your esteem, let me exhort and conjure You never to suffer an invasion of Your political constitution, however mi nute the instance may appear, to pass by, without a determined, persevering resistance. One precedent creates another. They soon ac

* This must be understood only in general terms. From the following passage in Private Letters, No. 8. it is obvious that there were persons to whom the writer unbosomed himself; although there is still every reason for believing that such per sons formed, as he has expressed it above, only a narrow circle. "The last letter you printed was idle and improper, and, I assure you, printed against my own opinion. The truth is there are people about me, whom I would wish not to contradict, and who had rather see JUNIUS in the papers, ever so improperly, than not at all." EDIT.

cumulate, and constitute law. What yesterday was fact, to-day is doctrine. Examples are supposed to justify the most dangerous measures, and where they do not suit exactly, the defect is supplied by analogy.-Be assured that the laws, which protect us in our civil rights, grow out of the constitution, and that they must fall or flourish with it. This is not the cause of faction, or of party, or of any individual, but the common interest of every man in Britain. Al though the King should continue to support his present system of government, the period is not very distant, at which You will have the means of redress in Your own power. It may be nearer perhaps than any of us expect, and I would warn You to be prepared for it. The King may possibly be advised to dissolve the present parliament a year or two before it expires of course, and precipitate a new election, in hopes of taking the nation by surprize. If such a measure be in agitation, this very caution may defeat or prevent it*.

* The object to have been accomplished by obtaining a new parliament does not appear to have been of sufficient force to have precipitated such a measure; and was, in consequence, relinquished on which account the parliament in question was not dissolved till September 30th, 1774, after having existed six years, four months, and twenty-one days. Many of the letters of JUNIUS turning upon the elective franchise, and the necessity of triennial parliaments, the reader may not be displeased to B 2

see,

I cannot doubt that You will unanimously assert the freedom of election, and vindicate Your exclusive right to choose Your representatives. But other questions have been started, on which Your determination should be equally clear and unanimous. Let it be impressed upon Your minds, let it be instilled into Your children, that the liberty of the press is the Palladium of all the civil, political, and religious rights of an Englishman, and that the right of juries to return a general verdict, in all cases whatsoever, is an essential part of our constitution, not to be controuled or limited by the judges, nor in

see, at one view, the respective dates of the dissolution and reassembling of the several parliaments during the present reign.

+ Stat. 39-40 Geo. III. c. 67. Art. 4. EDIT.

any shape questionable by the legislature. The power of King, Lords, and Commons is not an arbitrary power*. They are the trustees, not the owners of the estate. The fee-simple is in US. They cannot alienate, they cannot waste. When we say that the legislature is supreme, we mean that it is the highest power known to the constitution :-that it is the highest in comparison with the other subordinate powers established by the laws. In this sense, the word supreme is relative, not absolute. The power of the legislature is limited, not only by the general rules of natural justice, and the welfare of the community, but by the forms and prin

*This positive denial, of an arbitrary power being vested in the legislature, is not in fact a new doctrine. When the Earl of Lindsey, in the year 1675, brought a bill into the house of lords, To prevent the dangers, which might arise from persons disaffected to government, by which an oath and penalty was to be imposed upon the members of both houses, it was affirmed, in a protest signed by twenty-three lay-peers, (my lords the bishops were not accustomed to protest) "That the privilege of sitting and voting in parliament was an honour they had by birth, and a right so inherent in them, and inseparable from them, that nothing could take it away, but what, by the law of the land, must withal take away their lives, and corrupt their blood."-These noble peers, (whose names are a reproach to their posterity) have, in this instance, solemnly denied the power of parliament to alter the constitution. Under a particular proposition, they have asserted a general truth, in which every man in England is concerned.