upon the face of your own pamphlet. On the contrary, your justification of yourself is full of subtilty and refinement, and in some places not very intelligible. If I were personally your enemy, I should dwell with a malignant pleasure upon those great and useful qualifications which you certainly possess, and by which you once acquired, though they could not preserve to you, the respect and esteem of your country; I should enumerate the honours you have lost, and the virtues you have disgraced; but, having no private resentments to gratify, I think it sufficient to have given my opinion of your public conduct, leaving the punishment it deserves to your closet and to yourself.

JUNIUS.

LETTER XIX.

ADDRESSED TO THE

PRINTER OF THE PUBLIC ADVERTISER.

SIR,

August 14, 1769.

A CORRESPONDENT of the St.

James's Evening Post first wilfully misunderstands Junius, then censures him for a bad reasoner. Junius does not say that it was incumbent upon Doctor Blackstone to foresee and state the crimes for which Mr. Wilkes was expelled. If, by a spirit of prophecy, he had even done so, it would have been nothing to the purpose. The question is, not for what particular offences a person may be expelled, but, generally, whether, by the law of parliament, expulsion alone creates a disqualification. If the affirmative be the law of parliament, Doctor Blackstone might, and should, have told us so. The question is not confined to this or that particular person, but forms one great general branch of disqualifi- ' cation, too important in itself, and too extensive in its consequences, to be omitted in an accurate work expressly treating of the law of parliament

The truth of the matter is evidently this. Doctor Blackstone, while he was speaking in the House of Commons, never once thought of his commentaries, until the contradiction was unexpectedly urged, and stared him in the face. Instead of defending himself upon the spot, hẹ sunk under the charge in an agony of confusion and despair. It is well known that there was a pause of some minutes in the House, from a general expectation that the Doctor would say something in his own defence; but it seems his faculties were too much overpowered to think of those subtilties and refinements which have since occurred to him. It was then Mr. Grenville received that severe chastisement which the Doctor mentions with so much triumph: I wish the honourable gentleman, instead of shaking his head, would shake a good argument out of it. If to the elegance, novelty, and bitterness, of this ingenious sarcasm, we add the natural melody of the amiable Sir Fletcher Norton's pipe, we shall not be surprised that Mr. Grenville was unable to make him any reply.

As to the Doctor, I would recommend it to him to be quiet. If not, he may, perhaps, hear again from Junius himself.

PHILO JUNIUS.

POSTSCRIPT to a Pamphlet, entitled, An Answer to the Questions stated. Supposed to be written by Dr. Blackstone, Solicitor to the Queen, in answer to Junius's Letter.

Since these papers were sent to the press, a writer, in the public papers, who subscribes himself Junius, has made a feint of bringing this question to a short issue. Though the foregoing observations contain, in my opinion, at least, a full refutation of all that this writer has offered, I shall, however, bestow a very few words upon him. It will cost me very little trouble to unravel and expose the sophistry of his argument.

'I take the question (says he) to be strictly this: Whether or no it be the known estab'lished law of Parliament, that the expulsion of a member of the House of Commons, of itself, creates in him such an incapacity to be re' elected, that, at a subsequent election, any votes given to him are null and void; and that any other candidate, who, except the person 'expelled, has the greatest number of votes, ought to be the sitting member.'

Waving, for the present, any objection I may have to this state of the question, I shall

entity. Such was the determination of the House of Commons in the Malden and Bedford elections; cases strictly in point to the present question, as far as they are meant to be in point. And to say that they are not in point in all circumstances, in those particularly which are independent of the proposition which they are quoted to prove, is to say no more than that Malden is not Middlesex, nor Serjeant Comyns Mr. Wilkes.

Let us see then how our proof stands. Expul sion creates incapacity, incapacity annihilates any votes given to the incapable person; the votes given to the qualified candidate stand, upon their own bottom, firm and untouched, and can alone have effect. This, one would think, would be sufficient. But we are stopped short, and told, that none of our precedents come home to the present case, and are challenged to produce, "a precedent in all the proceedings of "the House of Commons that does come home "to it, viz. where an expelled member has been re"turned again, and another candidate, with an "inferior number of votes, has been declared the sitting member."

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Instead of a precedent, I will beg leave to