With respect to the navy, I shall only say, that this country is so highly indebted to Sir Edward Hawke, that no expense should be spared to secure to him an honourable and affluent retreat.

The pure and impartial administration of justice is perhaps the firmest bond to secure a cheerful submission of the people, and to engage their affections to government. It is not sufficient that questions of private right or wrong are justly decided, nor that judges are superior to the vileness of pecuniary corruption. Jefferies himself, when the court had no interest, was an upright judge. A court of justice may be subject to another sort of bias, more important and pernicious, as it reaches beyond the interest of individuals, and affects the whole community. A judge under the influence of government, may be honest enough in the decision of private causes, yet a traitor to the public.

Sir Edward Hawke.] His naval successes, the most splendid in the train of the late war, had given him a hold on the public favour, which even Junius would not attempt to destroy.

The pure and impartial administration of justice, &c.] The character of Lord MANSFIELD was deservedly high. His arguments and decisions as a judge, were not less admired than had been his eloquence as a pleader at the bar. But, he was a Scotsman: he was the friend of Lord BUTE: he was perhaps the chief adviser, in secret, of those measures which had been systematically pursued since the commencement of the present reign: he was inclined, in doing his duty on the bench of justice, to favour the crown in all contests between the crown and its subjects, so far as the law could possibly be made to allow: he was disposed continually to exalt the judicial authority of the bench to new superiority over that of the jury: he would sometimes speak of the reason and science of the Roman law, as greatly preferable to the technical barbarity of the English. Hinc ista ira!

When a victim is marked out by the ministry, this judge will offer himself to perform the sacrifice. He will not scruple to prostitute his dignity, and betray the sanctity of his office, whenever an arbitrary point is to be carried for government, or the resentment of a court to be gratified.

These principles and proceedings, odious and contemptible as they are, in effect are no less injudicious. A wise and generous people are roused by every appearance of oppressive, unconstitutional measures, whether those measures are supported only by the power of government, or masked under the forms of a court of justice. Prudence and self-preservation will oblige the most moderate dispositions to make common cause, even with a man whose conduct they censure, if they see him persecuted in a way which the real spirit of the laws will not justify. The facts, on which these remarks are founded, are too notorious to require an application.

These principles and proceedings, &c.] The author here draws his general conclusion; insinuating, that the view he had presented of ministerial measures, principles, and personal characters, was sufficient to justify the people in having recourse almost to the last and most violent efforts of constitutional resistance. This, however, he would have them to do, only in making common cause with a man whose conduct they censure. This man was JOHN WILKES. To procure the decisive support of Wilkes, as necessary to the restoration of the Whigs, to the maintenance of revolution principles, to the support of the authority of public opinion, was a leading object in the secret design of the Author of these Letters. For this end, he purposed to write down the ministry which he here attacks, as Mr. Wilkes had threatened to write down former administrations.

This, Sir, is the detail. In one view, behold a nation overwhelmed with debt; her revenues wasted; her trade declining; the affections of her colonies alienated; the duty of the magistrate transferred to the soldiery; a gallant army, which never fought unwil-. lingly but against their fellow-subjects, mouldering away for want of the direction of a man of common abilities and spirit; and, in the last instance, the administration of justice become odious and suspected to the whole body of the people. This deplorable scene admits of but one addition-that we are governed by counsels, from which a reasonable man can expect no remedy but poison, no relief but death,

If, by the immediate interposition of Providence, it were possible for us to escape a crisis so full of terror and despair, posterity will not believe the history of the present times. They will either conclude that our distresses were imaginary, or that we had the good fortune to be governed by men of acknowledged integrity and wisdom: they will not believe it possible

No remedy but poison, &c.] At a first reading, we might regard this and some other similar figures, as merely useless and extravagant rant. But, more careful consideration will induce us to forego this opinion. It is the master-art of these LETTERS OF JUNIUS, that they are addressed equally, on the one hand, to the taste, reason, and spirit of intrigue, of the great; and, on the other, to the prejudices, and the fierce abusive spirit, of the vulgar. For the sake of the latter, some slight occasional sacrifices were to be made by taste. Of these, the present extravagant figure is one. It seems just a sally of genius and dignity of mind, descending as far as it is possible for them to descend, to the coarseness of vulgar abuse. Never was coarseness better reconciled with dignity than in these Letters.

that their ancestors could have survived, or recovered from so desperate a condition, while a Duke of Grafton was Prime Minister, a Lord North Chancellor of the Exchequer, a Weymouth and a Hillsborough Secretaries of State, a Granby Commander in Chief, and a Mansfield Chief Criminal Judge of the kingdom.

JUNIUS.

LETTER II.

TO THE PRINTER OF THE PUBLIC ADVERTISER.

THE eloquence, the discernment, the profound knowledge of princiciples, displayed in the preceding Letter, an acquaintance with facts bespeaking access almost to the secret springs of ministerial and courtly information, the incomparable dignity and the malignant force of its invective, with the magnitude of the object at which it was plainly perceived to aim, instantly engaged, in an extraordinary degree, the general attention of all classes of the public. It was the principal new topic of conversation in every circle of the great, in which fashion, politics, and literature, were wont to associate. By men of literature, acquainted with the best models of composi tion, and practised in imitating them, it was read with astonishment, as a piece unequalled by Swift, by Bolingbroke, by Shebbeare, or by Wilkes. Even the poetical writers of political satire, Dryden, Pope, Hanbury Williams, and Churchill even in his Prophecy of Famine, had, as it seemed, less of vehement resentment, and of splendid fancy. Above all, the whole public remarked in it, a sort of native loftiness of thought and speech, somewhat as if it were a prophet reproving with the conscious authority of inspiration, or some indignant angel descending from Heaven, to make political weakness and profligacy shrink into themselves, that the ruin of Britain might yet be averted. The lowest class of readers, so far as they could understand the language of this Letter, found that it gave a sanction and a new dignity, to their own prejudices and errors; and, for what they could not understand, admired it just so much the more. The names of the ministers mentioned in the Letter of JUNIUS were, at once, believed to be all, most surely consigned to eternal infamy. Not only cloquence, and profound thinking, but a political sagacity that could be the fruit of experience alone, was earnestly remarked in this Letter. A leader appeared to have suddenly arisen, whose voice public opinion could not chuse but to obey. All wondered who might be the real author; and many vain surmises were on this head thrown out.