are) were advanced to offices, through which you might again control the minister, and probably engross the whole direction of affairs.

The possession of absolute power is now once more within your reach. The measures you have taken to obtain and confirm it, are too gross to escape the eyes of a discerning, judicious Prince. His palace is besieged; the lines of circumvallation are drawing round him; and, unless he finds a resource in his own activity, or in the attachment of the real friends of his family, the best of Princes must submit to the confinement of a state prisoner, until your Grace's death, or some less fortunate event, shall raise the siege. For the present you may safely resume that style of insult and menace, which even a private gentleman cannot submit to hear without being contemptible. Mr. M'Kenzie's history is not yet forgotten; and you may find precedents enough of the mode in which an imperious subject may signify his pleasure to his sovereign. Where will this gracious Monarch look for assistance, when the wretched Grafton could forget his obligations to his Master, and desert him for a hollow alliance with such a man as the Duke of Bedford!

Let us consider you, then, as arrived at the summit of wordly greatness; let us suppose that all your plans of avarice and ambition are accomplished, and your most sanguine wishes gratified, in the fear as

VOL. I.

well as the hatred of the people; can age itself forget that you are now in the last act of life? Can gray hairs make folly venerable? And is there no period to be reserved for meditation and retirement? For shame! my Lord, let it not be recorded of you, that the latest moments of your life were dedicated to the same unworthy pursuits, the same busy agitations, in which your youth and manhood were exhausted. Consider that, although you cannot disgrace your former life, you are violating the character of age, and exposing the impotent imbecility, after you have lost the vigour, of the passions.

Your friends will ask, perhaps, Whither shall this unhappy old man retire? Can he remain in the metropolis, where his life has been so often threatened, and his palace so often attacked? If he returns to Wooburn, scorn and mockery await him. He must create a solitude round his estate, if he would avoid the face of reproach and derision. At Plymouth, his destruction would be more than probable; at Exeter, inevitable. No honest Englishman will ever forget his attachment, nor any honest Scotchman forgive his treachery, to Lord Bute. At every town he enters, he must change his liveries and name. Which ever way he flies, the hue and cry of the country pursues

him.

In another kingdom, indeed, the blessings of his administration have been more sensibly felt; his

Virtues better understood: or, at worst, they will not, for him alone, forget their hospitality. As well might Verres have returned to Sicily. You have twice escaped, my Lord; beware of a third experiment. The indignation of a whole people, plundered, insulted, and oppressed, as they have been, will not always be disappointed.

It is in vain, therefore, to shift the scene. You can no more fly from your enemies, than from yourself. Persecuted abroad, you look into your own heart for consolation, and find nothing but reproaches and despair. But, my Lord, you may quit the field of business, though not the field of danger, and though you cannot be safe, you may cease to be ridiculous. I fear you have listened too long to the advice of those pernicious friends, with whose interests you have sordidly united your own, and for whom you have sacrificed every thing that ought to be dear to a man of honour. They are still base enough to encourage the follies of your age, as they once did the vices of your youth. As little acquainted with the rules of decorum, as with the laws of morality, they will not suffer you to profit by experience, nor even to consult the propriety of a bad character. Even now they tell you, that life is no more than a dramatic scene, in which the hero should preserve his consistency to the and that, as you lived without virtue, you should

last;

die without repentance.

JUNIUS.

LETTER XXIV.

SIR,

TO JUNIUS.

September 14, 1769.

HAVING, accidentally, seen a republication of your letters, wherein you have been pleased to assert, that I had sold the companions of my success, I am again obliged to declare the said assertion to be a most infamous and malicious falsehood; and I again call upon you to stand forth, avow yourself, and prove the charge. If you can make it out to the satisfaction of any one man in the kingdom, I will be content to be thought the worst man in it; if you do not, what must the nation think of you? Party has nothing to do in this affair: you have made a personal attack upon my honour, defamed me by a most vile calumny, which might possibly have sunk into oblivion, had not such uncommon pains been taken to renew and perpetuate this scandal, chiefly because it has been told in good language; for I give you full credit for your elegant diction, wellturned periods, and Attic wit: but wit is oftentimes false, though it may appear brilliant; which is exactly the case of your whole performance. But, Sir, I am obliged, in the most serious manner, to accuse you of being guilty of falsities. You have said the thing

that is not. To support your story, you have recourse to the following irresistible argument: "You sold the "companions of your victory, because, when the "16th regiment was given to you, you was silent. The "conclusion is inevitable." I believe that such deep and acute reasoning could only come from such an extraordinary writer as Junius. But, unfortunately for you, the premises, as well as the conclusion, are absolutely false. Many applications have been made to the Ministry, on the subject of the Manilla ransom, since the time of my being colonel of that regiment. As I have for some years quitted London, I was obliged to have recourse to the Honourable Colonel Monson, and Sir Samuel Cornish, to negotiate for me. In the last autumn, I personally delivered a memorial to the Earl of Shelburne, at his seat in Wiltshire. As you have told us of your importance, that you are a person of rank and fortune, and above a common bribe, you may, in all probability, be not unknown to his Lordship, who can satisfy you of the truth of what I say. But I shall now take the liberty, Sir, to seize your battery, and turn it against your self. If your puerile and tinsel logic could carry the least weight or conviction with it, how must you stand affected by the inevitable conclusion, as you are pleased to term it? According to Junius, silence is guilt. In many of the public papers, you have been called, in the most direct and offensive terms, a liar, and a coward. When did you reply to these foul accusations? You have been quite silent, quite chop❤