served are rarely met with. Let us take mankind as they are; let us distribute the virtues and abilities of individuals according to the offices they affect; and, when they quit the service, let us endeavour to supply their places with better men than we have lost. In this country there are always candidates enough for popular favour. The temple of fame is the shortest passage to riches and preferment.

Above all things, let me guard my countrymen against the meanness and folly of accepting of a trifling or moderate compensation for extraordinary and essential injuries. Our enemy treats us as the cunning trader does the unskilful Indian; they magnify their generosity, when they give us baubles of little proportionate value for ivory and gold. The same house of commons, who robbed the constituent body of their right of free election; who presume to make a law, under pretence of declaring it; who paid our good king's debts, without once inquiring how they were incurred; who gave thanks for repeated murders committed at home, and for national infamy incurred abroad; who screened lord Mansfield; who imprisoned the magistrates of the metropolis for asserting the subject's right to the protection of the laws; who erased a judicial record, and ordered all proceedings in a criminal suit to be suspended: this very house of commons have graciously consented that their own members may be compelled to pay their debts, and that contested elections shall, for the future, be determined with some decent regard to the merits of the case. The event of the suit is of no consequence to the crown. While parliaments

are septennial, the purchase of the sitting member, or of the petitioner, makes but the difference of a day. Concessions such as these are of little moment to the sum of things; unless it be to prove that the worst of men are sensible of the injuries they have done us, and perhaps to demonstrate to us the imminent danger of our situation. In the shipwreck of the state, trifles float, and are preserved; while every thing solid and valuable sinks to the bottom, and is lost for ever.

JUNIUS.

SIR,

LETTER LIX.

To the Printer of the Public Advertiser.

October 15, 1771.

I AM convinced that Junius is incapable of wilfully misrepresenting any man's opinion, and that his inclination leads him to treat lord Camden with particular candour and respect. The doctrine attributed to him by Junius, as far as it goes, corresponds with that stated by your correspondent Scævola, who seems to make a distinction without a difference. Lord Camden it is agreed, did certainly maintain, that, in the recess of parliament, the king (by which we all mean the king in council, or the executive power) might suspend the operation of an act of the legislature; and he founded his doctrine upon a supposed necessity, of which the king, in the first instance, must be judge. The lords and commons cannot be judges of it in the first instance, for they do not exist. Thus far Junius.

But, says Scævola, lord Camden made parlia

estates.

ment, and not the king, judges of the necessity. That parliament may review the acts of ministers, is unquestionable; but there is a wide difference between saying, that the crown has a legal power and that the ministers may act at their peril. When we say that an act is illegal, we mean that it is forbidden by a joint resolution of the three How a subsequent resolution of two of those branches can make it legal, ab initio, will require explanation. If it could, the consequence would be truly dreadful, especially in these times. There is no act of arbitrary power which the king might not attribute to necessity, and for which he would not be secure of obtaining the approbation of his prostituted lords and commons. If lord Camden admits, that the subsequent sanction of parliament was necessary to make the proclamation legal, why did he so obstinately oppose the bill, which was soon after brought in, for indemnifying all those persons who had acted under it? If that bill had not been passed, I am ready to maintain, in direct contradiction to lord Camden's doctrine, (taken as Scævola states it) that a litigious exporter of corn, who had suffered in his property, in consequence of the proclamation, might have laid his action against the customhouse officers, and would infallibly have recovered damages. No jury could refuse them: and if I, who am by no means litigious, had been so injured, I would assuredly have instituted a suit in Westminster-hall, on purpose to try the question of right. I would have done it upon a principle of defiance of the pretended power of either or both houses to make declarations inconsistent with

law; and I have no doubt that, with an act of parliament on my side, I should have been too strong for them all. This is the way in which an Englishman should speak and act, and not suffer dangerous precedents to be established, because the circumstances are favourable or palliating.

With regard to lord Camden, the truth is, that he inadvertently overshot himself, as appears plainly by that unguarded mention of a tyranny of forty days, which I myself heard. Instead of asserting, that the proclamation was legal, he should have said, "My lords, I know the proclamation was illegal; but I advised it, because it was indispensably necessary to save the kingdom from famine; and I submit myself to the justice and mercy of my country.”

Such language as this would have been manly, rational, and consistent; not unfit for a lawyer, and every way worthy of a great man.

PHILO JUNIUS.

P. S. If Scævola should think proper to write again upon this subject, I beg of him to give me a direct answer; that is, a plain affirmative or negative, to the following questions:-In the interval between the publishing such a proclamation (or order of council) as that in question, and its receiving the sanction of the two houses, of what nature is it? Is it legal or illegal? Or, is it neither one nor the other? I mean to be candid, and will point out to him the consequence of his answer either way. If it be legal, it wants no farther sanction; if it be illegal, the subject is not bound to obey it, consequently it is an useless,

nugatory act, even as to its declared purpose. Before the meeting of parliament, the whole mischief which it means to prevent will have been completed.

SIR,

LETTER LX.

To Zeno.

October 17, 1771.

THE sophistry of your letter in defence of lord Mansfield is adapted to the character you defend. But lord Mansfield is a man of form, and seldom in his behaviour transgresses the rules of decorum. I shall imitate his lordship's good manners, and leave you in full possession of his principles. I will not call you a liar, Jesuit, or villain; but, with all the politeness imaginable, perhaps I may prove you so.

Like other fair pleaders in lord Mansfield's school of justice, you answer Junius by misquoting his words, and mistating his propositions. If I am candid enough to admit, that this is the very logic taught at St. Omer's, you will readily allow, that this is the constant practice in the court of king's bench. Junius does not say that he never had a doubt about the strict right of pressing, til. he knew lord Mansfield was of the same opinion. His words are, "until he heard that lord Mansfield had applauded lord Chatham for maintaining that doctrine in the house of lords." It was not the accidental concurrence of lord Mansfield's opinion, but the suspicious applause given by a cunning Scotchman to the man he detests, that raised and justified a doubt in the mind of Junius