without expence or danger. I am not versed in the politics of the north; but this I believe is certain, that half the money you have distributed to carry the expulsion of Mr. Wilkes, or even your secretary's share in the last subscription, would have kept the Turks at your devotion. Was it œconomy, my Lord? or did the coy resistance you have constantly met with in the British senate, make you despair of corrupting the Divan? Your friends indeed have the first claim upon your bounty; but if five hundred pounds a year can be spared in a pension to Sir John Moore, it would not have disgraced you to have allowed something to the secret service of the public.

You will say, perhaps, that the situation of affairs at home demanded and engrossed the whole of your attention. Here, I confess, you have been active. An amiable, accomplished prince, ascends the throne under the happiest of all auspices, the acclamations and united affections of his subjects. The first measures of his reign, and even the odium of a favourite, were not able to shake their attachYour services, my Lord, have been more

ment.

Would have kept the Turks at your devotion, &c.] The influence of France was, at this time, greater than that of Britain, at the court of Constantinople. In the war between the Turks and the Russians, French officers were sent to discipline the Turks to the use of a system of tactics and an artillery, greatly superior to their own: and the Russians were, at the same time, enabled to equip formidable fleets, only by the instructions and the assistance of naval officers from Britain,

successful. Since you were permitted to take the lead, we have seen the natural effects of a system of government at once both odious and contemptible. We have seen the laws sometimes scandalously relaxed, sometimes violently stretched beyond their tone. We have seen the person of the Sovereign insulted; and in profound peace, and with an undisputed title, the fidelity of his subjects brought by his own servants into public question*. Without abilities, resolution, or interest, you have done more than Lord Bute could accomplish with all Scotland at his heels.

YOUR Grace, little anxious perhaps either for present or future reputation, will not desire to be handed down in these colours to posterity. You have reason to flatter yourself, that the memory of your administration will survive even the forms of a constitution which our ancestors vainly hoped would be immortal; and as for your personal character, I will not, for the honour of human nature,

* The wise Duke, about this time, exerted all the influence of government to procure addresses to satisfy the King of the fidelity of his subjects. They came in very thick from Scotland; but, after the appearance of this Letter, we heard no more of them.

Without abilities, &c.] There is, in this sentence, a degree of obscurity. It means, that the Duke of Grafton had made his Sovereign more odious than even Lord Bute and the Scots. It uses a language, as if it were wonderful that so mean a man should do so much. But there is an affected quaintness in the expression. For JUNIUS would insinuate that, in truth, the Duke must have been weak as well as wicked; otherwise he could not have served his Sovereign so unhappily.

suppose

suppose that you can wish to have it remembered. The condition of the present times is desperate indeed; but there is a debt due to those who come after us, and it is the historian's office to punish, though he cannot correct. I do not give you to posterity as a pattern to imitate, but as an example to deter; and as your conduct comprehends every thing that a wise or honest minister should avoid,. I mean to make you a negative instruction to your successors for ever,

LETTER XIII.

ADDRESSED TO THE PRINTER OF THE PUBLIC ADVERTISER.

The public had read the preceding Letter with all that eager curiosity and satisfaction, which the combination of reason, wit, and eloquence, with malignity and scandal, never fails to command.

The friends of the minister were irritated and confounded: his col leagues were alarmed: his enemies were delighted. Attempts were made, in various modes of address to the public, to vilify the character of JUNIUS's stile and eloquence; to refute his arguments; to evince that his assertions of fact were maliciously false. His ability no where appears to greater advantage, than in this Letter, in which his former charges against the Duke of Grafton are vin dicated and repeated. It is, if possible, adapted to its purpose, even with more masterly force and propriety than the first which he addressed to Sir William Draper.

He was not a Milton, or a Salmasius, to forget the support of his facts or arguments in a vain solicitude for the defence of his stile. Scorne fully overlooking whatever critical censure had been thrown out upon it; he, with the true art of a logician and an orator, confines himself to the shortest, the plainest, the most business-like, yet at the same time the most sentimental and forcible defence that could possibly be made, of the assertions and the inferences of his former Letter.

Long deductions and proofs could not suit his purpose. He knew a happier method of confounding his opponents, and impressing uni· vérsal conviction. He is content to state his facts, singly, in succession, in the defying form of interrogation, and with a force of sentiment and a vivacity of address, to which it is impossible not to yield. He was aware that he should have the prejudices of a great part of his readers ready to support his arguments; and he was cell skilled to touch the master-keys by which all those prejudices might be waked, at once, to brisk activity. To give the greater weight and freedom to his defence, he appears, in this Letter, not as JÚNIUS himself

himself, but as PHILO-JUNIUS; a different person, who was convinced by the reasonings of the former, and knew his facts not to be

false.

SIR,

12. June, 1769.

THE Duke of Grafton's friends, not finding it convenient to enter into a contest with JUNIUS, are now reduced to the last melancholy resource of defeated argument, the flat general charge of scurrility and falsehood. As for his stile, I shall leave it to the critics. The truth of his facts is of more importance to the public. They are of such a nature, that I think a bare contradiction will have no weight with any man who judges for himself. Let us take them in the order in which they appear in his last letter.

1. HAVE not the first rights of the people, and the first principles of the constitution, beẹn openly invaded, and the very name of an election made ridiculous, by the arbitrary appointment of Mr. Luttrell ?

2. DID not the Duke of Grafton frequently lead his mistress into public, and even place her at the head of his table; as if he had pulled down an ancient temple of Venus, and could bury all decency

and

As if he had pulled down an ancient temple of Venus, &c.] There is wit, and yet incongruity, with too studied an effort to be witty, in the use of this figure. Miss Parsons was no longer in the first bloom of youth, nor a woman of virtue; and she is, therefore, not unhappily compared to an old temple, and that an old temple of

Venus.