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.

TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF GRAFTON.

18 March, 1769.

MY LORD, Before you were placed at the head of affairs, it had been a maxim of the English government, not unwillingly admitted by the people, that every ungracious or severe exer tion of the prerogative should be placed to the account of the minister; but that whenever an act of grace or benevolence was to be performed, the whole merit of it should be attributed to the sovereign himself. It was a wise doctrine, my Lord, and equally advantageous to the king and to his subjects; for while it preserved that suspicious attention, with which the people ought always to examine the conduct of ministers, it tended at the same time rather to increase than to diminish their attachment to the person of their sovereign. If there be not a fatality attending every measure you are concerned in, by what treachery or by what excess of folly has it happened, that those ungracious acts, which have distinguished your administration, and which I doubt not were entirely your own, should carry with them a strong appearance of personal interest, and even of personal enmity, in a quarter, where no such interest or enmity can be supposed to exist, without the highest injustice and the highest dishonor? On the other hand, by what judicious management have you contrived it, that the only act of mercy, to which you ever advised your sovereign, far from adding to the luster of a character, truly gracious and benevolent, should be received with universal disapprobation and disgust? I shall consider it as a ministerial measure, because it is an odious one; and as your measure, my Lord Duke, because you are the minister.

As long as the trial of this chairman was depending, it was natural enough that government should give him every possible encouragement and support. The honorable service for which he was hired, and the spirit with which he performed it, made common cause between your Grace and him. The minister, who by secret corruption invades the freedom of elections, and the ruffian, who by open violence destroys that freedom, are embarked in the same bottom. They have the same interests, and

mutually feel for each other. To do justice to your Grace's humanity, you felt for MacQuirk as you ought to do, and if you had been contented to assist him indirectly, without a notorious denial of justice, or openly insulting the sense of the nation, you might have satisfied every duty of political friendship, without committing the honor of your sovereign, or hazarding the reputation of his government. But when this unhappy man had been solemnly tried, convicted, and condemned; — when it appeared that he had been frequently employed in the same services, and that no excuse for him could be drawn either from the innocence of his former life, or the simplicity of his character, was it not hazarding too much to interpose the strength of the prerogative between this felon and the justice of his country? You ought to have known that an example of this sort was never so necessary as at present; and certainly you must have known that the lot could not have fallen upon a more guilty object. What system of government is this? You are perpetually complaining of the riotous disposition of the lower class of the people, yet when the laws have given you the means of making an example, in every sense unexceptionable, and by far the most likely to awe the multitude, you pardon the offense, and are not ashamed to give the sanction of government to the riots you complain of, and even to future murders. You are partial perhaps to the military mode of execution, and had rather see a score of these wretches butchered by the guards, than one of them suffer death by regular course of law. How does it happen, my Lord, that, in your hands, even the mercy of the prerogative is cruelty and oppression to the subject?

The measure it seems was so extraordinary, that you thought it necessary to give some reasons for it to the public. Let them be fairly examined.

1. You say that Messrs. Bromfield and Starling were not examined at MacQuirk's trial. I will tell your Grace why they were not. They must have been examined upon oath; and it was foreseen, that their evidence would either not benefit, or might be prejudicial to the prisoner. Otherwise, is it conceivable that his counsel should neglect to call in such material evidence?

2. You say that Mr. Foot did not see the deceased until after his death. A surgeon, my Lord, must know very little of his profession, if, upon examining a wound, or a contusion, he cannot determine whether it was mortal or not. While the party

is alive, a surgeon will be cautious of pronouncing; whereas, by the death of the patient, he is enabled to consider both cause and effect in one view, and to speak with a certainty confirmed by experience.

Yet we are to thank your Grace for the establishment of a new tribunal. Your inquisitio post mortem is unknown to the laws of England, and does honor to your invention. The only material objection to it is, that if Mr. Foot's evidence was insufficient, because he did not examine the wound till after the death of the party, much less can a negative opinion, given by gentlemen who never saw the body of Mr. Clarke, either before or after his decease, authorize you to supersede the verdict of a jury, and the sentence of the law.

Now, my Lord, let me ask you, Has it never occurred to your Grace, while you were withdrawing this desperate wretch from that justice which the laws had awarded, and which the whole people of England demanded, against him, that there is another man, who is the favorite of his country, whose pardon would have been accepted with gratitude, whose pardon would have healed all our divisions? Have you quite forgotten that this man was once your Grace's friend? Or is it to murderers only that you will extend the mercy of the crown?

These are questions you will not answer. Nor is it necessary. The character of your private life, and the uniform tenor of your public conduct, is an answer to them all.

JUNIUS.

TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF GRAFTON.

12 December, 1769.

MY LORD, -I find with some surprise, that you are not supported as you deserve. Your most determined advocates have scruples about them, which you are unacquainted with; and, though there be nothing too hazardous for your Grace to engage in, there are some things too infamous for the vilest prostitute of a newspaper to defend. In what other manner shall we account for the profound, submissive silence, which you and your friends have observed upon a charge, which called immediately for the clearest refutation, and would have justified the severest measures of resentment? I did not attempt to blast your character by an indirect, ambiguous insinuation, but candidly stated to you a plain fact, which struck directly at the integrity of a privy counselor, of a first commissioner of the Treasury, and of

a leading minister, who is supposed to enjoy the first share in his Majesty's confidence. In every one of these capacities I employed the most moderate terms to charge you with treachery to your sovereign, and breach of trust in your office. I accused you of having sold, or permitted to be sold, a patent place in the collection of the customs at Exeter, to one Mr. Hine, who, unable or unwilling to deposit the whole purchase-money himself, raised part of it by contribution, and has now a certain Doctor Brooke quartered upon the salary for one hundred pounds a year. No sale by the candle was ever conducted with greater formality. I affirm that the price at which the place was knocked down (and which, I have good reason to think, was not less than three thousand five hundred pounds) was, with your connivance and consent, paid to Colonel Burgoyne, to reward him, I presume, for the decency of his deportment at Preston; or to reimburse him, perhaps, for the fine of one thousand pounds, which, for that very deportment, the Court of King's Bench thought proper to set upon him. It is not often that the chief justice and the prime minister are so strangely at variance in their opinions of men and things.

I thank God there is not in human nature a degree of impudence daring enough to deny the charge I have fixed upon you. Your courteous secretary, your confidential architect, are silent as the grave. Even Mr. Rigby's countenance fails him. He violates his second nature, and blushes whenever he speaks of you. Perhaps the noble colonel himself will relieve you. No man is more tender of his reputation. He is not only nice, but perfectly sore in everything that touches his honor. If any man, for example, were to accuse him of taking his stand at a gaming-table, and watching, with the soberest attention, for a fair opportunity of engaging a drunken young nobleman at piquet, he would undoubtedly consider it as an infamous aspersion upon his character, and resent it like a man of honor. Acquitting him therefore of drawing a regular and splendid subsistence from any unworthy practices, either in his own house or elsewhere, let me ask your Grace, for what military merits you have been pleased to reward him with a military government? He had a regiment of dragoons, which, one would imagine, was at least an equivalent for any services he ever performed. Besides, he is but a young officer, considering his preferment, and, except in his activity at Preston, not very conspicuous in his profession. But it seems, the sale of a civil employment was not sufficient,

and military governments, which were intended for the support of worn-out veterans, must be thrown into the scale, to defray the extensive bribery of a contested election. Are these the steps you take to secure to your sovereign the attachment of his army? With what countenance dare you appear in the royal presence, branded as you are with the infamy of a notorious breach of trust? With what countenance can you take your seat at the Treasury-board or in council, when you feel that every circulating whisper is at your expense alone, and stabs you to the heart? Have you a single friend in parliament so shameless, so thoroughly abandoned, as to undertake your defense? You know, my Lord, that there is not a man in either House, whose character, however flagitious, would not be ruined by mixing his reputation with yours; and does not your heart inform you, that you are degraded below the condition of a man, when you are obliged to hear these insults with submission, and even to thank me for my moderation?

We are told, by the highest judicial authority, that Mr. Vaughan's offer to purchase the reversion of a patent in Jamaica (which he was otherwise sufficiently entitled to) amounted to a high misdemeanor. Be it so: and if he deserves it, let him be punished. But the learned judge might have had a fairer opportunity of displaying the powers of his eloquence. Having delivered himself with so much energy upon the criminal nature and dangerous consequences of any attempt to corrupt a man in your Grace's station, what would he have said to the minister himself, to that very privy counselor, to that first commissioner of the Treasury, who does not wait for, but impatiently solicits the touch of corruption; who employs the meanest of his creatures in these honorable services, and, forgetting the genius and fidelity of his secretary, descends to apply to his house-builder for assistance?

This affair, my Lord, will do infinite credit to government, if, to clear your character, you should think proper to bring it into the House of Lords, or into the Court of King's Bench. -But, my Lord, you dare not do either. JUNIUS.

FOR THE PUBLIC ADVERTISER.

19 December, 1769.

WHEN the complaints of a brave and powerful people are observed to increase in proportion to the wrongs they have