and perfectly spy of the in closed a you send it to and persist, ads well. more Servant inform uld study her left at my stured. whole on House about red to you, & importauld it would be necess of opere to me Be so good had never spoken to, and to ask him whether or no he was the author of JUNIUS-take care of him. Whenever you have any thing to communicate to me, let the hint be thus C at the usual place, and so direct to Mr. John Fretley, at the same Coffee-house, where it is absolutely impossible I should be known. I did not mean the Latin to be printed. I wish Lord Holland may acquit himself with honour1. If his cause be good, he should at once have published that account, to which he refers in his letter to the Mayor'. Pray tell me whether George Onslow means to keep his word with you about prosecuting. Yes or No will be sufficient. Your Lycurgus is a Mr. Kent, a young man of good parts upon town. And so I wish you a good night. Yours, C. 1 The Editor has already observed, in the Preliminary Essay, that JuIus appears to have uniformly entertained a good opinion of, or at least a partiality for, Lord Holland. The remark is not new; it was noticed long ago by several of his opponents. Thus, in a letter subscribed by our author, Anti-Fox, and inserted in the Public Advertiser of October 16th, 1771, he thus speaks of him: “I know nothing of JUNIUS; but I see plainly that he has designedly spared Lord Holland and his family.” 2 See note A at the end of the Letter. 3 See note B at the end of the Letter. 4 Lycurgus was a frequent writer in the Public Advertiser during the spring and summer of 1769; and opposed the ministry, but with less violence than most of his contemporaries. A. He seems to refer to a charge of embezzlement of the public treasure,' made in the City Petition presented to his Majesty, July 5th, 1769, of which the following is a copy:- The humble Petition of the Livery of the City of London in Common Hall assembled. "Most gracious Sovereign, "We, your Majesty's dutiful and loyal subjects, the Livery of the City of London, with all the humility which is due from free subjects to their lawful Sovereign, but with all the anxiety which the sense of the present oppressions, and the just dread of future mischiefs produce in our minds, beg leave to lay before your Majesty some of those intolerable intolerable grievances which your people have suffered from the evil conduct of those who have been intrusted with the administration of your Majesty's government, and from the secret unremitting influence of the worst of counsellors. "We should be wanting in our duty to your Majesty, as well as to ourselves and our posterity, should we forbear to represent to the throne the desperate attempts which have been, and are too successfully made, to destroy that constitution, to the spirit of which we owe the relation which subsists between your Majesty and the subjects of these realms, and to subvert those sacred laws which our ancestors have sealed with their blood. "Your ministers, from corrupt principles, and in violation of every duty, have, by various enumerated means, invaded our invaluable and unalienable right of trial by jury. 66 They have, with impunity, issued general warrants, and violently seized persons and private papers. "They have rendered the laws non-effective to our security, by evading the Habeas Corpus. "They have caused punishments, and even perpetual imprisonment, to be inflicted without trial, conviction, or sentence. "They have brought into disrepute the civil magistracy, by the appointment of persons who are, in many respects, unqualified for that important trust, and have thereby purposely furnished a pretence for calling in the aid of a military power. “They avow, and endeavour to establish a maxim, absolutely inconsistent with our constitution, that an occasion for effectually employing a military force always presents itself when the civil power is trifled with or insulted;' and by a fatal and false application of this maxim, they have wantonly and wickedly sacrificed the lives of many of your Majesty's innocent subjects, and have prostituted your Majesty's sacred name and authority, to justify, applaud, and recommend their own illegal and bloody actions. "They have screened more than one murderer from punishment, and in its place have unnaturally substituted reward. "They have established numberless unconstitutional regulations and taxations in our colonies. They have caused a revenue to be raised in some of them by prerogative. They have appointed civil law judges to try revenue causes, and to be paid from out of the condemnation money. "After having insulted and defeated the law on different occasions, and by different contrivances, both at home and abroad, they have at length completed their design, by violently wresting from the people the last sacred right we had left, the right of election: by the unprecedented seating of a candidate notoriously set up and chosen only by themselves. They have thereby taken from your subjects all hopes of parliamentary redress, and have left us no resource, under God, but in your Majesty. "All this they have been abl to effect by corruption; by a scandalous misapplication and embezzlement of the public treasure, and a shameful prostitution prostitution of public honours and employments; procuring deficiencies in the civil list to be made good without examination; and, instead of punishing, conferring honours on a pay-master, the public defaulter of unaccounted millions. "From an unfeigned sense of the duty we owe to your Majesty, and to our country, we have ventured thus humbly to lay before the throne these great and important truths, which it has been the business of your ministers to conceal. We most earnestly beseech your Majesty to grant us redress. It is for the purpose of redress alone, and for such occasions as the present, that those great and extensive powers are intrusted to the crown, by the wisdom of that constitution, which your Majesty's illustrious family was chosen to defend, and which we trust in God, it will for ever continue to support." Lord Holland suspecting himself to be implicated in the last paragraph but one of the above petition, addressed the following letter to the Lord Mayor upon this subject: TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE LORD MAYOR. "My Lord, "In a petition presented by your Lordship it is mentioned as a grievance, Instead of punishing, conferring honours on a pay-master, the public defaulter of unaccounted millions. I am told that I am the pay-master here censured: may I beg to know of your Lordship if it is so? If it is, I am sure Mr. Beckford must have been against it, because he knows, and could have shewn your Lordship in writing, the utter falsehood of what is there insinuated. "I have not the honour to know your Lordship, so I cannot tell what you may have heard to induce you to carry to our Sovereign a complaint of so atrocious a nature. "Your Lordship, by your speech made to the King at delivering the petition, has adopted the contents of it; and I do not know of whom to enquire but of your Lordship concerning this injury done to an innocent man, who am by this means (if I am the person meant) hung out as an object of public hatred and resentment. "You have too much honour and justice not to tell me whether I am the person meant, and if I am, the grounds upon which I am thus charged, that I may vindicate myself, which truth will enable me to do to the conviction of the bitterest enemy; and therefore I may boldly say, to your Lordship's entire satisfaction, whom I certainly have never offended, "I am, with the greatest respect, "My Lord, "Your Lordship's most obedient "Holland House, Kensington, July 9th, 1769." "HOLLAND." To this letter the Lord Mayor returned the following answer: "The Lord Mayor presents his compliments to Lord Holland, and in answer |