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decisive personal part you took against them has to the good faith of his own countrymen? Without effectually banished that first distinction from their looking for support in their affections as subjects, he minds. They consider you as united with your ser- applied only to their honor, as gentlemen, for protecvants against America; and know not how to dis- tion. They received him, as they would your majtinguish the sovereign and a venal parliament on one esty, with bows, and smiles, and falsehood; and kept side, from the real sentiments of the English people him, until they had settled their bargain with the Looking forward to independence, English parliament; then basely sold their native on the other. they might possibly receive you for their king: but, king to the vengeance of his enemies. This, sir, was if ever you retire to America, be assured they will not the act of a few traitors, but the deliberate A wise prince might draw from it two give you such a covenant to digest, as the presbytery treachery of a Scotch parliament, representing the of Scotland would have been ashamed to offer to nation. Charles the Second. They left their native land in lessons of equal utility to himself. On one side, he search of freedom, and found it in a desert. Divided might learn to dread the undisguised resentment of a as they are into a thousand forms of policy and relig-generous people, who dare openly assert their rights, ion, there is one point in which they all agree: they and who, in a just cause, are ready to meet their equally detest the pageantry of a king, and the supercilious hypocrisy of a bishop.

It is not then from the alienated affections of Ireland or America that you can reasonably look for assistance; still less from the people of England, who are actually contending for their rights, and in this great question are parties against you. You are not, however, destitute of every appearance of support; you have all the Jacobites, Nonjurors, Roman Catholies, and Tories of this country, and all Scotland, without exception. Considering from what family you are descended the choice of your friends has been singularly directed; and truly, sir, if you had not lost the Whig interest of England, I should admire your dexterity in turning the hearts of your enemies. Is it possible for you to place any confidence in men, who, before they are faithful to you, must renounce every opinion, and betray every principle, both in church and state, which they inherit from their ancestors, and are confirmed in by their education? whose numbers are so inconsiderable, that they long since have been obliged to give up the principles and language which distinguish them as a party, and to fight under the banners of their enemies? Their zeal begins with hypocrisy, and must conclude in treachery. At first they deceive at last they betray.

A

As to the Scotch, I must suppose your heart and understanding so biassed, from your earliest infancy, in their favor, that nothing less than your own misfortunes can undeceive you. You will not accept of the uniform experience of your ancestors; and, when once a man is determined to believe, the very absurdity of the doctrine confirms him in his faith. bigoted understanding can draw a proof of attachment to the house of Hanover, from a notorious zeal for the house of Stuart, and find an earnest of future loyalty in former rebellions. Appearances are, however, in their favor: so strongly, indeed, that one would think they had forgotten that you are their lawful king, and had mistaken you for a pretender to the crown. Let it be admitted, then, that the Scotch are as sincere in their present professions, as if you were, in reality, not an Englishman, but a Briton of the North. You would not be the first prince, of their native country, against whom they have rebelled, nor the first whom they have basely betrayed. Have you forgotten, sir, or has your favorite concealed from you, that part of our history, when the unhappy Charles (and he, too, had private virtues) fled from the open, avowed indignation of his English subjects, and surrendered himself at discretion

In the king's speech of November 8th, 1768, it was declared, That the spirit of faction had broken out afresh in some of the colonies, and, in one of them, proceeded to acts of violence and resistance to the execution of the laws; that Boston was in a state of disobedience to all laws and government, and had proceeded to measures subversive of the constitution, and attended with circumstances that manifested a disposition to throw off their dependance on Great Britain."

sovereign in the field. On the other side, he would be taught to apprehend something far more formidable; a fawning treachery, against which no prudence can guard, no courage can defend. The insiduous smile upon the cheek would warn him of the canker in the

heart.

*

From the uses to which one part of the army has been too frequently applied, you have some reason to expect that there are no services they would refuse. Here, too, we trace the partiality of your understanding. You take the sense of the army from the conduct of the guards, with the same justice with which you collect the sense of the people from the representations of the ministry. Your marching regiments, sir, will not make the guards their example, either as soldiers or subjects. They feel, and resent, as they ought to do, that invariable, undistinguishing favor with which the guards are treated; while those gallant troops, by whom every hazardous, every laborious service is performed, are left to perish in garrisons abroad, or pine in quarters at home, neglected and forgotten. If they had no great sense, of the original duty they owe their country, their resentment would operate like patriotism, and leave your cause to be defended by those to whom you have lavished the rewards and honors of their profession. The Prætorian bands, enervated, and debauched as they were, had still strength enough to awe the Roman populace; but when the distant legions took the alarm, they marched to Rome, and gave away the empire.

On this side then, whichever way you turn your eyes, you see nothing but perplexity and distress. You may determine to support the very ministry who have reduced your affairs to this deplorable situation: you may shelter yourself under the forms of a parliament, and set the people at defiance; but be assured, sir, that such a resolution would be as imprudent as it would be odious. If it did not immediately shake your establishment, it would rob you of your peace of mind forever.

On the other, how different is the prospect! How easy, how safe and honorable is the path before you! The English nation declare they are grossly injured by their representatives, and solicit your majesty to exert your lawful prerogative, and give them an opportunity of recalling a trust, which they find has been scandalously abused. You are not to be told, that the power of the House of Commons is not original, but delegated to them for the welfare of the

*The number of commissioned officers in the guards are to the marching regiments as one to eleven: the number of regiments given to the guards, compared with those given to the line, is about three to one, at a moderate computation; consequently, the partiality in favor of The private men have fourpence a day to subthe guards is as thirty-three to one. So much for the officers sist on, and five hundred lashes if they desert. Under this punishment they frequently expire. With these encouragements, it is supposed, they may be depended butcher his fellow-subjects. upon, whenever a certain person thinks it necessary to

people, from whom they received it. A question of | noble victory over your own. Discard those little right arises between the constituent and representa- personal resentments, which have too long directed tive body. By what authority shall it be decided? your public conduct. Pardon this man the remainder Will your majesty interfere in a question in which of his punishment; and, if resentment still prevails, you have properly no immediate concern? It would make it, what it should have been long since, an act, be a step equally odious and unnecessary. Shall the not of mercy, but of contempt. He will soon fall lords be called upon to determine the rights and back into his natural station; a silent senator, and privileges of the Commons?-They cannot do it, hardly supporting the weekly eloquence of a newswithout a flagrant breach of the constitution. Or paper. The gentle breath of peace would leave him will you refer it to the judges? They have often on the surface, neglected and unremoved. It is only told your ancestors, that the law of Parliament is the tempest that lifts him from his place. above them. What party then remains, but to leave it to the people to determine for themselves? They alone are injured; and, since there is no superior power to which the cause can be referred, they alone ought to determine.

Without consulting your minister, call together your whole council. Let it appear to the public, that you can determine and act for yourself. Come forward to your people. Lay aside the wretched formalities of a king, and speak to your subjects with the spirit of a man, and in the language of a gentleman. Tell them you have been fatally deceived. The acknowledgement will be no disgrace, but rather an honor to your understanding. Tell them you are determined to remove every cause of complaint against your government; that you will give your confidence to no man, who does not possess the confidence of your subjects; and leave it to themselves to determine, by their conduct at a future election, whether or no it be, in reality, the general sense of the nation, that their rights have been arbitrarily invaded by the present House of Commons, and the constitution betrayed. They will then do justice to their representatives and to themselves.

These sentiments, sir, and the style they are conveyed in, may be offensive, perhaps, because they are new to you. Accustomed to the language of courtiers, you measure their affection by the vehemence of their expressions; and when they only praise you indifferently, you admire their sincerity. But this is not a time to trifle with your fortune. They deceive you, sir, who tell you that you have many friends, whose affections are founded upon a principle of personal attachment. The first foundation of friendship is not the power of conferring benefits, but the equality with which they are received, and may be returned. The fortune which made you a king, forbade you to have a friend. It is a law of nature, which cannot be violated with impunity. The mistaken prince, who looks for friendship, will find a favorite, and in that favorite the ruin of his affairs.

I do not mean to perplex you with a tedious argument upon a subject already so discussed that inspiration could hardly throw a new light upon it. There are, however, two points of view in which it particularly imports your majesty to consider the late proceedings of the house of commons. By depriving a subject of his birthright they have attributed to their own vote an authority equal to an act of the whole legislature; and, though perhaps not with the same motives, have strictly followed the example of the long parliament, which first declared the regal office useless, and soon after, with as little ceremony, dissolved the house of lords. The same pretended power which robs an English subject of his birthright, may rob an English king of his crown. In another view, the resolution of the house of commons, apparently not so dangerous to your majesty, is still more alarming to your people. Not contented with divesting one man of his right, they have arbitrarily conveyed that right to another. They have set aside a return as illegal, without daring to censure those officers who were particularly apprized of Mr. Wilkes's incapacity, not only by the declaration of the house, but expressly by the writ directed to them, and who nevertheless returned him as duly elected. They have rejected the majority of votes, the only criterion by which our laws judge of the sense of the people; they have transferred the right of election from the collective to the representative body; and by these acts, taken separately or together, they have essentially altered the original constitution of the house of commons. Versed as your maj- The people of England are loyal to the House of esty undoubtedly is in the English history, it can- Hanover; not from a vain preference of one family not easily escape you, how much it is your interest, to another, but from a conviction, that the establishas well as your duty, to prevent one of the three es- ment of that family was necessary to the support of tates from encroaching upon the province of the their civil and religious liberties. This, sir, is a other two, or assuming the authority of them all. principle of allegiance equally solid and rational, fit When once they have departed from the great con- for Englishmen to adopt, and well worthy of your stitutional line by which all their proceedings should majesty's encouragement. We cannot long be debe directed, who will answer for their future moder-luded by nominal distinctions. The name of Stuart, ation? Or what assurance will they give you, that of itself, is only contemptible; armed with the sovwhen they have trampled upon their equals, they ereign authority, their principles are formidable. will submit to a superior? Your majesty may learn The prince who imitates their conduct, should be hereafter, how nearly the slave and tyrant are allied. warned by their example; and, while he plumes Some of your council, more candid than the rest, himself upon the security of his title to the crown, admit the abandoned profligacy of the present House should remember, that, as it was acquired by one of Commons, but oppose their dissolution, upon an revolution, it may be lost by another. JUNIUS. opinion, I confess, not very unwarrantable, that their successors would be equally at the disposal of the treasury. I cannot persuade myself that the nation will have profited so little by experience. But, if that opinion were well founded, you might then gratify our wishes at an easy rate, and appease the present clamor against your government, without offering any material injury to the favorite cause of corruption.

You have still an honorable part to act. The affections of your subjects may still be recovered. But efore you subdue their hearts, you must gain a

LETTER XXXVI.

TO HIS GRACe the Duke of GRAFTON. MY LORD, February 14, 1770. If I were personally your enemy, I might pity and forgive you. You have every claim to compassion that can arise from misery and distress. The condition you are reduced to would disarm a private enemy of his resentment, and leave no consolation to the most vindictive spirit, but that such an object as you are would disgrace the dignity of revenge, But,

In the relation you have born to this country, you unworthy treatment. They had a right to be heard; have no title to indulgence; and if I had and their petitions if not granted, deserved to be confollowed the dictates of my own opinion, Isidered. Whatever be the real views and doctrines never should have allowed you the respite of of a court, the sovereign should be taught to prea moment. In your public character, you have serve some forms of attention to his subjects; and, if injured every subject of the empire; and though he will not redress their grievances, not to make an individual is not authorized to forgive the in- them a topic of jest and mockery among lords and juries done to society, he is called upon to assert his ladies of the bed-chamber. Injuries may be atoned separate share in the public resentment. I sub- for and forgiven; but insults admit of no compensamitted, however, to the judgment of men, more tion. They degrade the mind in its own esteem, and moderate, perhaps more candid, than myself. For force it to recover its level by revenge. This neglect my own part, I do not pretend to understand those of the petitions was, however, a part of your original prudent forms of decorum, those gentle rules of dis- plan of government; nor will any consequences it cretion, which some men endeavor to unite with the has produced account for your deserting your conduct of the greatest and most hazardous affairs. sovereign, in the midst of that distress, in which you Engaged in the defense of an honorable cause, I and your new friends* have involved him. One would take a decisive part. I should scorn to pro- would think, my lord, you might have taken this vide for a future retreat, or to keep terms with a man spirited resolution before you had dissolved the last who preserves no measure with the public. Neither of those early connections, which once, even in your the abject submission of deserting his post in the own opinion, did honor to your youth; before you hour of danger, nor even the sacred shield of had obliged lord Granby to quit a service he was cowardice should protect him. I would pursue him attached to; before you had discarded one chancellor, through life, and try the last exertion of my abilities and killed another. To what an abject condition to preserve the perishable infamy of his name, and have you labored to reduce the best of princes, when make it immortal. the unhappy man, who yields at last to such personal instance and solicitation, as never can be fairly employed against a subject, feels himself degraded by his compliance, and is unable to survive the disgraceful honors which his gracious sovereign had compelled him to accept. He was a man of spirit, for he had a quick sense of shame, and death has redeemed his character. I know your grace too well to appeal to your feelings upon this event; but there is another heart, not yet, I hope, quite callous to the touch of humanity, to which it ought to be a dreadful lesson for ever.†

What then, my lord? Is this the event of all the sacrifices you have made to lord Bute's patronage, and to your own unfortunate ambition? Was it for this you abandoned your earliest friendships, the warmest connections of your youth, and all those honorable engagements by which you once solicited, and might have acquired, the esteem of your country? Have you secured no recompense for such a waste of honor? Unhappy man! what party will receive the common deserter of all parties? Without a client to flatter, without a friend to console you, and with only one companion from the honest house of Bloomsbury, you must now retire into a dreadful solitude. At the most active period of life you must quit the busy scene, and conceal yourself from the world, if you would hope to save the wretched remains of a ruined reputation. The vices operate like age, bring on disease before its time, and in the prime of youth leave the character broken and exhausted. Yet your conduct has been mysterious, as well as contemptible. Where is now that firmness, or obstinacy, so long boasted of by your friends, and acknowledged by your enemies? We were taught to expect that you would not leave the ruin of this country to be completed by other hands, but were determined either to gain a decisive victory over the constitution, or to perish bravely, at least, behind the last dike of the prerogative. You knew the danger, and might have been provided for it. You took sufficient time to prepare for a meeting with your parliament, to confirm the mercenary fidelity of your dependents, and to suggest to your sovereign a language suited to his dignity at least, if not to his benevolence and wisdom. Yet, while the whole kingdom was agitated with anxious expectation upon one great point, you meanly evaded the question, and, instead of the explicit firmness and decision of a king, gave us nothing but the misery of a ruinedt grazier, and the wining piety of a methodist. We had reason to expect, that notice would have been taken of the petitions which the king had received from the English nation; and although I can conceive some personal motives for not yielding to them, I can find none, in common prudence or decency, for treating them with contempt. Be assured, my lord, the English people will not tamely submit to this

*Sacro tremuere timore. Every coward pretends to be planet-struck.

There was something wonderfully pathetic in the mention of the horned cattle.

Now my lord, let us consider the situation to which you have conducted, and in which you have thought it advisable to abandon, your royal master. Whenever the people have complained, and nothing better could be said in defense of the measures of the government, it has been the fashion to answer us, though not very fairly, with an appeal to the private virtues of your sovereign; "Has he not, to relieve the people, surrendered a considerable part of his revenue? Has he not made the judges independent, by fixing them in their places for life?" My lord, we acknowledge the gracious principle which gave birth to these concessions, and have nothing to regret but that it has never been adhered to. At the end of seven years, we are loaded with a debt of above five hundred thousand pounds upon the civil list; and now we see the chancellor of Great Britain tyrannically forced out of his office, not for want of abilities, not for want of integrity, or of attention to his duty, but for delivering his honest opinion in parliament, upon the greatest constitutional question that has arisen since the revolution. We care not to whose private virtues you appeal. The theory of such a government is falsehood and mockery; the practice is oppression. You have labored then (though, I confess, to no purpose) to rob your master of the only plausible answer that ever was given in defense of his government-of the opinion which the people had conceived of his personal honor and integrity. The duke of Bedford was more moderate than your grace; he only forced his master to violate a solemn promise made to an individual;* but you, my lord, have successively extended your advice to every political, every moral engagement, that could bind either the The Bedford party.

* The most secret particular of this detestable transaction shall in due time be given to the public. The people shall know what kind of man they have to deal with. + Mr. Stuart M'Kenzie.

magistrate or the man. The condition of a king is often miserable; but it requirdd your grace's abilities to make it contemptible. You will say, perhaps, that the faithful servants, in whose hands you have left him, are able to retrieve his honor, and to support his government. You have publicly declared, even since your resignation, that you approved of their measures, and admired their conduct, particularly that of the earl of Sandwich. What a pity it is, that, with all this appearance, you should think it necessary to separate yourself from such amiable companions! You forget. my lord, that, while you are lavish in the praise of men whom you desert, you are publicly opposing your conduct to your opinions, and depriving yourself of the only plausible pretence you had for leaving your sovereign overwhelmed with distress. I call it plausible; for, in truth, there is no reason whatsoever, less than the frowns of your master, that could justify a man of spirit for abandoning his post at a moment so critical and important. It is in vain to evade the question; if you will not speak out, the public have a right to judge from appearances. We are authorized to conclude, that you either differed from your colleagues, whose measures you still affect to defend, or that you thought the administration of the king's affairs no longer tenable. You are at liberty to choose between the hypocrite and the coward. Your best friends are in doubt which way they shall incline. Your country unites the characters, and gives you credit for them both. For my own part, I see nothing inconsistent in your conduct. You began with betraying the people; you conclude with betraying the king.

The recollection of the royal patent you sold to Mr. Hine, obliges me to say a word in defense of a man, whom you have taken the most dishonorable means to injure. I do not refer to the sham prosecntion which you affected to carry on against him. On that ground, I doubt not, he is prepared to meet you with tenfold recrimination, and set you at defiance. The injury you had done him affects his moral character. You knew that the offer to purchase the revision of a place, which has heretofore been sold under a decree of the court of chancery, however imprudent in his situation, would no way tend to cover him with that sort of guilt which you wished to fix upon him in the eyes of the world. Yon labored then, by every species of false suggestion, and even by publishing counterfeit letters, to have it understood, that he had proposed terms of accommodation to you, and had offered to abandon his principles, his party, and his friends. You consulted your own breast for a character of consummate treachery, and gave it to the public for that of Mr. Vaughan. I think myself obliged to do this justice to an injured man, because I was deceived by the appearances thrown out by your grace, and have frequently spoken of his conduct with indignation. If he really be. what I think him, honest, though mistaken, he will be happy in recovering his reputation, though at the expense of his understanding. Here I see the matter is likely to rest. Your grace is afraid to carry on the prosecution. Mr. Hine keeps quiet possession of the purchase; and governor Burgoyne, relieved from the apprehension of refunding the money, sits down, for the remainder of his life, infamous and contented.

In your treatment of particular persons, you have preserved the uniformity of your character. Even I believe, my lord, I may now take my leave of yon Mr. Bradshaw declares, that no man was ever so ill for ever. You are no longer that resolute minister, used as himself. As to the provision* you have who had spirit to support the most violent measures; made for his family, he was entitled to it by the house who compensated for the want of good and great he lives in, The successor of one chancellor might qualities, by a brave determination (which some peowell pretend to be the rival of another. It is the ple admired and relied on) to maintain himself withbreach of private friendship which touches Mr. Brad-out them. The reputation of obstinacy and perseshaw; and, to say the truth, when a man of his rank verance might have supplied the place of all the and abilities had taken so active a part in your af- absent virtues. You have now added the last negafairs, he ought not to have been let down at last with tive to your character, and meanly confessed that you a miserable pension of fifteen hundred pounds a-year. are destitute of the common spirit of a man. Retire, Colonel Luttrell, Mr. Onslow, and governor Burgoyne, then, my lord, and hide your blushes from the world, were equally engaged with you, and have rather more for, with such a load of shame, even black may change reason to complain than Mr. Bradshaw. These are its color. A mind such as yours, in the solitary hours men, my lord, whose friendship you should have ad- of domestic enjoyment, may still find topics of consohered to on the same principle on which you deserted lation. You may find it in the memory of violated lord Rockingham, lord Chatham, lord Camden, and friendship; in the afflictions of an accomplished the duke of Portland. We can easily account for prince, whom you have disgraced and deserted; and your violating your engagements with men of honor; in the agitations of a great country, driven, by your but why should you betray your natural connections? counsels, to the brink of destruction. Υ Why separate yourself from lord Sandwich, lord Gower, and Mr. Rigby; or leave the three worthy gentlemen above-mentioned to shift for themselves? With all the fashionable indulgence of the times, this country does not abound in characters like theirs; and you may find it a very difficult matter to recruit the black catalogue of your friends.

* A pension of 15001. per annum, insured upon the four and a half per cents. (he was too cunning to trust to Irish security) for the lives of himself and his sons. This gentleman, who, a very few years ago, was clerk to a contractor for forage, and afterwards exalted to a petty post in the war office, thought it necessary (as soon as he was appointed secretary to the treasury) to take that great house in Lincoln's-Inn-fields, in which the earl of Northington had resided, while he was lord high chancellor of Great Britain. As to the pension, lord North very sol emnly assured the house of commons, that no pension was ever so well deserved as Mr. Bradshaw's N. B. Lord Camden and sir Jeffrey Amherst are not near so well provided for: and sir Edward Hawke, who saved the state, retires with two thousand pounds a year on the Irish establishment, from which he, in fact, receives less than Mr. Bradshaw's pension.

The palm of ministerial firmness is now transferred to lord North. He tells us so himself, and with the plentitude of the ore rotundo;* and I am ready enough to believe, that, while he can keep his place, he will not easily be pursuaded to resign it. Your grace was the firm minister of yesterday; lord North is the firm minister of to-day: to-morrow, perhaps, his majesty, in his wisdom, may give us a rival for you both. You are too well acquainted with the temper of your late allies, to think it possible that lord North should be permitted to govern this country. If we may believe common fame, they have shown him their superiority already. His majesty is, indeed, too gracious to insult his subjects, by choosing his first minister from among the domestics of the duke of Bedford; that would have been too gross an outrage to the three kingdoms. Their purpose, however, is equally answered, by pushing forward this

*This eloquent person has got as far as the discipline of Demosthenes. He constantly speaks with pebbles in his mouth, to improve his articulation.

unhappy figure, and forcing it to bear the odium of their duty, they will not surrender their birth-right measures, which they in reality direct. Without to ministers, parliaments, or kings. The city of Lonimmediately appearing to govern, they possess the power, and distribute the emoluments of government, as they think proper. They still adhere to the spirit of that calculation which made Mr. Luttrell representative of Middlesex. Far from regretting your retreat, they assure us, very gravely, that it increases the real strength of the ministry. According to this way of reasoning, they will probably grow stronger and more flourishing every hour they exist: for I think there is hardly a day passes in which some one or other of his majesty's servants does not leave them to improve by the loss of his assistance. But, alas! their countenances speak a different language. When the members drop off, the main body cannot be insensible of its approaching dissolution. Even the violence of their proceedings is a signal of despair. Like broken tenants, who have had warning to quit the premises, they curse their landlords, destroy the fixtures, throw every thing into confusion, and care not what mischief they do to the estate. JUNIUS.

LETTER XXXVII.

don have expressed their sentiments with freedom and firmness; they have spoken truth boldly; and, in whatsoever light their remonstrance may be represented by courtiers, I defy the most subtile lawyer in this country to point out a single instance in which they have exceeded the truth. Even that assertion which we are told is most offensive to parliament, in the theory of the English constitution, is strictly true. If any part of the representative body be not chosen by the people, that part vitiates and corrupts the whole. If there be a defect in the representation of the people, that power, which alone is equal to the making of the laws in this country, is not complete, and the acts of parliament, under that circumstance, are not the acts of a pure and entire legislature. I speak of the theory of our constitution; and whatever difficulties or inconveniences may attend the practice, I am ready to maintain that, as far as the fact deviates from the principle, so far the practice is vicious and corrupt. I have not heard a question raised upon any other part of the remonstrance. That the principle on which the Middlesex election was determined, is more pernicious in its effects than either the levying of ship-money by Charles the First, or the suspending power assumed by his son, will hardly be disputed by any man who understands or wishes well to the English constitution. It is not an act of open violence done by the king, or any direct or palpable breach of the laws attempted by his minister, that can ever endanger the liberties of this country. Against such a king or minister the people would immediately take the alarm, and all the parties unite to oppose him. The laws may be grossly violated in particular instances, without any direct attack upon the whole system. Facts of that kind stand alone; they are attributed to necessity, not defended by principles. We can never be really in danger, until the forms of parliament are made use of to destroy the substance of our civil and political liberties; until parliament itself betrays its trust, by contributing to establish new principles of government, and employing the very weapons committed to it by the collective body to stab the constitution.

TO THE PRINTER OF THE PUBLIC ADVERTISER. SIR, March 19, 1770. I believe there is no man, however indifferent about the interests of this country, who will not readily confess, that the situation to which we are now reduced, whether it has arisen from the violence of faction, or from an arbitrary system of government, justifies the most melancholy apprehensions, and calls for the exertion of whatever wisdom or vigor is left among us. The king's answer to the remonstrance of the city of London, and the measures since adopted by the ministry, amount to a plain declaration, that the principle on which Mr. Luttrell was seated in the house of commons, is to be supported in all its consequences, and carried to its utmost extent. The same spirit which violated the freedom of election, now invades the declaration and bill of rights, and threatens to punish the subject for exercising a privilege hitherto undisputed, of petition- As for the terms of the remonstrance, I presume it ing the crown. The grievances of the people are will not be affirmed, by any person less polished than aggravated by insults; their complaints not merely a gentleman usher, that this is a season for complidisregarded, but checked by authority ; and every one ments. Our gracious king, indeed, is abundantly of those acts against which they remonstrated, con- civil to himself. Instead of an answer to a petition, firmed by the king's decisive approbation. At such his majesty very graciously pronounces his own pana moment, no honest man will remain silent or in- egyric; and I confess that, as far as his personal beactive. However distinguished by rank or property, havior, or the royal purity of his intentions, is conin the rights of freedom we are all equal. As we are cerned, the truth of those declarations, which the Englishmen, the least considerable man among us has minister has drawn up for his master, cannot decently an interest equal to the proudest nobleman in the be disputed. In every other respect, I affirm, that laws and constitution of his country, and is equally they are absolutely unsupported either in argument called upon to make a generous contribution in sup- or fact: I must add, too, that supposing the speech port of them; whether it be the heart to conceive, were otherwise unexceptionable, it is not a direct the understanding to direct, or the hand to execute. answer to the petition of the city. His majesty is It is a common cause in which we are all interested, pleased to say, that he is always ready to receive the in which we should all be engaged. The man who request of his subjects; yet the sheriffs were twice deserts it at this alarming crisis, is an enemy to his sent back with an excuse; and it was certainly decountry, and, what I think of infinitely less import- bated in council, whether or no the magistrates of ance, a traitor to his sovereign. The subject, who is the city of London should be admitted to an audience. truly loyal to the chief magistrate, will neither ad- Whether the remonstrance be or be not injurious to vise or submit to arbitrary measures. The city of parliament, is the very question between the parliaLondon hath given an example, which, I doubt not, ment and the people, and such a question as canwill be followed by the whole kingdom. The noble not be decided by the assertion of a third party, spirit of the metropolis is the life-blood of the state, however respectable. That the petitioning for a collected at the heart: from that point it circulates, dissolution of parliament is irreconcilable with the with health and vigor, through every artery of the principles of the constitution, is a new doctrine. His constitution. The time is come when the body of majesty, perhaps, has not been informed, that the the English people must assert their own cause: con-house of commons themselves, have, by a formal scious of their strength, and animated by a sense of resolution, admitted it to be the right of the subject.