I am truly glad (for really, Sir William, I am not your enemy, nor did I begin this contest with you) that you have been able to clear yourself of a crime, though at the expense of the highest indiscretion. You say, that your half-pay was given you by way of pension. I will not dwell upon the singularity of uniting in your own person two sorts of provision, which, in their own nature, and in all military and parliamentary views, are incompatible; but I call upon you to justify that declaration, wherein you charge your sovereign with having done an act in your favour notoriously against law. The half-pay, both in Ireland and England, is appropriated by parliament; and if it be given to persons who, like you, are legally incapable of holding it, it is a breach of law. It would have been more decent in you to have called this dishonourable transaction by its true name; a job to accommodate two persons, by particular interest and management at the castle. What sense must government have had of your services, when the rewards they have given you are only a disgrace to you!

And now, Sir William, I shall take my leave of you forever. Motives very different from any apprehension

Wherein you charge, &c.] The word wherein is now obsolete. It occurs, only in our elder classical works, and in books of law. Among such, probably, did the reading of JUNIUS chiefly lie. But even in in the pages of JUNIUS, the use of wherein, seems inelegant.

And if it be given to persons who, like you, are legally incapable of holding it, it is a breach of law &c.] To be grammatically correct, this passage should have stood thus:-To give it to persons who, like you, are legally incapable of holding it, is a breach of law.

of your resentment, make it impossible you should ever know me. In truth, you have some reason to hold yourself indebted to me. From the lessons I have given you, you may collect a profitable instruction for your future life. They will either teach you so to regulate your conduct, as to be able to set the most malicious inquiries at defiance; or, if that be a lost hope, they will teach you prudence enough not to attract the public attention to a character, which will only pass without censure, when it passes without

observation.

JUNIUS*.

It has been said, and I believe truly, that it was signified to Sir William Draper, as the request of Lord Granby, that he should desist from writing in his Lordship's defence. Sir William Draper certainly drew JUNIUS forward to say more of Lord Granby's character than he originally intended. He was reduced to the dilemma of either being totally silenced, or of supporting his first Letter. ·

Whether Sir William had a right to reduce him to this dilemma, or to call upon him for his name, after a voluntary attack on his side, are questions submitted to the candour of the public. The death of Lord Granby was lamented by JUNIUS. He undoubtedly owed some compensations to the public, and seemed determined to acquit himself of them. In private life, he was unquestionably that good man, who, for the interest of his country, ought to have been a great one. Bonum virum facile dixeris;-magnum libenter. I never spoke of him with resentment. His mistakes in public conduct, did not arise either from want of sentiment, or want of judgment, but in general from the difficulty of saying No to the bad people who surrounded him.

As for the rest, the friends of Lord Granby should remember, that he himself thought proper to condemn, retract, and disavow, by a most solemn declaration in the House of Commons, that very system of political conduct, which JUNIUS had held forth to the disapprobation of the public.

LETTER VIII.

TO THE DUKE OF GRAFTON.

WHEN JUNIUS closed his correspondence with Sir William Draper, he was impatient to aim at a nobler quarry. The Duke of Grafton was now principal minister, or First Lord of the Treasury. He stood at the head of those whom this writer wished to frighten from the helm of affairs. But for the interposition of Sir William Draper, and the discussion of the character of Lord Granby, the duke would probably have been singled out, the first, for a particular attack. Although writing these Letters, evidently, upon a pre-conceived and regular plan, yet JUNIUS had so settled this plan with himself, that he could seize, towards its accomplishment, in any part, whatever new events should rise upon the public notice, while he was proceeding in the series of his epistolary invectives. He, in this Letter, took occasion to open his attack on the Duke of Grafton, by joining in the outcry of popular resentment, on account of a pardon granted to a chairman, who had been condemned for murder, and whom the populace of London wished rather to have seen hanged. The circumstances of the case are worthy of being here mentioned somewhat in detail. The resignation of Mr. Pitt and Lord Temple, upon the rejection of the former's advice to declare war on Spain, was perhaps fully justified by the information and the views on which that advice was founded. But the resignation of those ministers, was made the signal for raising the outrageous clamour of unpopularity against the government of the sovereign, whose councils they had forsaken. When the Duke of Newcastle, and his dependents, at length reluctantly followed their example, a new agency was added to increase the bluster of the storm. The populace of London and Westminster would not, of themselves, have easily become prompt to seditious tumults, against the sway of a young monarch of an interesting person, and the fairest private character. But the discontented great, openly encouraged, to a certain length, the murmurs and tumults of the people; and what they themselves would not openly do to provoke those tumults and murmurs, that they contrived to have done more secretly by busy agitators, and

: