they have judiciously transferred the question object as it would be an affront to you to name. Men of sense will examine your conduct with suspicion; while those who are incapable of comprehending to what extent they are injured, afflict you with clamors equally insolent and unmeaning. Supposing it possible that no fatal struggle should ensue, you determine at once to be unhappy, without the hope of a compensation either from interest or ambition. If an English king be hated or despised, he must be unhappy; and this, perhaps, is the only political truth which he ought to be convinced of without experiment. But if the English people should no longer confine their resentment to a submissive representation of their wrongs; if, following the glorious example of their ancestors, they should no longer appeal to the creature of the Constitution, but to that high Being who gave them the rights of humanity, whose gifts it were sacrilege to surrender, let me ask you, sir, upon what part of your subjects would you rely for assistance? The people of Ireland have been uniformly plundered and oppressed. In return, they give you every day fresh marks of their resentment. They despise the miserable governor [Viscount Townsend] you have sent them, because he is the creature of Lord Bute; nor is it from any natural confusion in their ideas that they are so ready to confound the original of a king with the disgraceful representation of him. The circumstances to which you are reduced will not admit of a compromise with the English nation. Undecisive, qualifying measures will disgrace your government still more than open violence, and, without satisfying the people, will excite their contempt. They have too much understanding and spirit to accept of an indirect satisfaction for a direct injury. Nothing less than a repeal, as formal as the resolution itself, can heal the wound which has been given to the Constitution, nor will any thing less be accepted. I can readily believe that there is an influence sufficient to recall that pernicious vote. The House of Commons undoubtedly consider their duty to the Crown as paramount to all other obligations. To us they are only indebted for an accidental existence, and have justly transferred their gratitude from their parents to their benefactors-from those who gave them birth, to the minister from whose benevolence they derive the comforts and pleasures of their political life; who has taken the tenderest care The distance of the colonies would make it of their infancy, relieves their necessities with-impossible for them to take an active concern in out offending their delicacy, and has given them, your affairs, if they were as well affected to your what they value most, a virtuous education. government as they once pretended to be to your But, if it were possible for their integrity to be person. They were ready enough to distinguish degraded to a condition so vile and abject, that, between you and your ministers. They comcompared with it, the present estimation they plained of an act of the Legislature, but traced stand in is a state of honor and respect, con- the origin of it no higher than to the servants of sider, sir, in what manner you will afterward the Crown. They pleased themselves with the proceed? Can you conceive that the people hope that their Sovereign, if not favorable to of this country will long submit to be governed their cause, at least was impartial. The deciby so flexible a House of Commons? It is not sive, personal part you took against them, has in the nature of human society that any form of effectually banished that first distinction from government, in such circumstances, can long be their minds. They consider you as united preserved. In ours, the general contempt of the with your servants against America, and know people is as fatal as their detestation. Such, I how to distinguish the sovereign and a venal am persuaded, would be the necessary effect of Parliament on one side, from the real sentiments any base concession made by the present House of the English people on the other. Looking of Commons; and, as a qualifying measure would forward to independence, they might possibly not be accepted, it remains for you to decide receive you for their king; but, if ever you rewhether you will, at any hazard, support a set tire to America, be assured they will give you of men, who have reduced you to this unhappy such a Covenant to digest, as the presbytery of dilemma, or whether you will gratify the united Scotland would have been ashamed to offer to wishes of the whole people of England by dis- Charles the Second. They left their native solving the Parliament. land in search of freedom, and found it in a desert. Divided as they are into a thousand forms Taking it for granted, as I do very sincerely, that you have personally no design against the Constitution, nor any views inconsistent with the In the King's speech of 8th November, 1768, it good of your subjects, I think you can not hesi- was declared "that the spirit of faction had broken tate long upon the choice which it equally con-out afresh in some of the colonies, and, in one of eerns your interest and your honor to adopt. On one side, you hazard the affections of all your English subjects; you relinquish every hope of repose to yourself, and you endanger the establishment of your family forever. All this you venture for no object whatsoever, or for such an them, proceeded to acts of violence and resistance state of disobedience to all law and government, and to the execution of the laws; that Boston was in a had proceeded to measures subversive of the Constitution, and attended with circumstances that manifested a disposition to throw off their dependence on Great Britain." of policy and religion, there is one point in which | the vengeance of his enemies. This, sir, was they all agree: they equally detest the pageantry not the act of a few traitors, but the deliberate of a King, and the supercilious hypocrisy of a treachery of a Scotch Parliament representing bishop. the nation. A wise prince might draw from it two lessons of equal utility to himself. On one side he might learn to dread the undisguised resentment of a generous people, who dare openly assert their rights, and who, in a just cause, are ready to meet their sovereign in the field. On the other side, he would be taught to apprehend something far more formidable-a fawning treachery, against which no prudence can guard, no courage can defend. The insidious smiles upon the cheek would warn him of the canker in the heart. It is not, then, from the alienated affections of Ireland or America, that you can reasonably look for assistance; still less from the people of England, who are actually contending for their rights, and, in this great question, are parties against you. You are not, however, destitute of every appearance of support. You have all the Jacobites, Nonjurors, Roman Catholics, and Tories of this country, and all Scotland without exception. Considering from what family you are descended, the choice of your friends has been singularly directed; and truly, sir, if you had not lost the Whig interest of England, I should admire your dexterity in turning the hearts of your enemies. Is it possible for you to place any confidence in men, who, before they are faithful to you, must renounce every opinion, and betray every principle, both in church and state, which they inherit from their ancestors, and are confirmed in by their education? whose numbers are so inconsiderable, that they have long since been obliged to give up the principles and language which distinguished them as a party, and to fight under the banners of their enemies? Their zeal begins with hypocrisy, and must conclude in treachery. At first they deceive, at last they betray. As to the Scotch, I must suppose your heart and understanding so biased, from your earliest infancy, in their favor, that nothing less than your own misfortunes can undeceive you. You will not accept of the uniform experience of your ancestors; and when once a man is determined to believe, the very absurdity of the doctrine confirms him in his faith. A bigoted understanding can draw a proof of attachment to the house of Hanover from a notorious zeal for the house of Stuart, and find an earnest of future loyalty in former rebellions. Appearances are, however, in their favor; so strongly, indeed, that one would think they had forgotten that you are their lawful King, and had mistaken you for a Pretender to the crown. Let it be admitted, then, that the Scotch are as sincere in their present professions as if you were in reality not an Englishman, but a Briton of the North-you would not be the first prince of their native country against whom they have rebelled, nor the first whom they have basely betrayed. Have you forgotten, sir, or has your Favorite concealed from you that part of our history, when the unhappy Charles (and he, too, had private virtues) fled from the open, avowed indignation of his English subjects, and surrendered himself at discretion to the good faith of his own countrymen? Without looking for support in their affections as subjects, he applied only to their honor as gentlemen, for protection. They received him as they would your Majesty, with bows, and smiles, and falsehood, and kept him until they had settled their bargain with the English Parliament; then basely sold their native king to From the uses to which one part of the army has been too frequently applied, you have some reason to expect that there are no services they would refuse. Here, too, we trace the partiality of your understanding. You take the sense of the army from the conduct of the Guards, with the same justice with which you collect the sense of the people from the representations of the ministry. Your marching regiments, sir, will not make the Guards their example, either as soldiers or subjects. They feel and resent, as they ought to do, that invariable, undistinguishing favor with which the Guards are treated; while those gallant troops, by whom every hazardous, every laborious service is performed, are left to perish in garrisons abroad, or pine in quarters at home, neglected and forgotten. they had no sense of the great original duty they owe their country, their resentment would operate like patriotism, and leave your cause to be defended by those to whom you have lavished the rewards and honors of their profession. The Pretorian bands, enervated and debauched as they were, had still strength enough to awe the Roman populace; but when the distant legions took the alarm, they marched to Rome, and gave away the Empire. If On this side, then, whichever way you turn your eyes, you see nothing but perplexity and distress. You may determine to support the very ministry who have reduced your affairs to this deplorable situation; you may shelter yourself under the forms of Parliament, and set your 7 Note by Junius. The number of commissioned officers in the Guards are to the marching regiments as one to eleven; the number of regiments given to the Guards, compared with those given to the line, is about three to one, at a moderate computation; consequently, the partiality in favor of the Guards is as thirty-three to one. So much for the officers The private men have fourpence a day to subsist on, and five hundred lashes if they desert. Under this punishment they frequently expire. With theso encouragements, it is supposed they may be depended upon, whenever a certain person thinks it necessary to butcher his fellow-subjects. This is one of the passages which show the fa miliarity of Junius with Tacitus, when composing these Letters. The event referred to was the march of the German legions to Rome, under Vitellius, and their defeat of the Pretorian Bands, who had previously given the imperial dignity to Otho, from whom it passed to Vitellius. jected the majority of votes, the only criterion by which our laws judge of the sense of the people; they have transferred the right of election from the collective to the representative body; and by these acts, taken separately or together, they have essentially altered the original constitution of the House of Commons. Versed, as your Majesty undoubtedly is, in the English history, it can not easily escape you, how much it is to your interest, as well as your duty, to pre upon the province of the other two, or assuming the authority of them all. When once they have departed from the great constitutional line by which all their proceedings should be directed, who will answer for their future moderation? Or what assurance will they give you, that, when they have trampled upon their equals, they will submit to a superior? Your Majesty may learn hereafter how nearly the slave and tyrant are allied. Some of your council, more candid than the rest, admit the abandoned profligacy of the present House of Commons, but oppose their dissolution upon an opinion, I confess not very unwarrantable, that their successors would be equally at the disposal of the treasury. I can not persuade myself that the nation will have profited so little by experience. But if that opinion were well founded, you might then gratify our wishes at an easy rate, and appease the present clamor against your government without offering any material injury to the favorite cause of corruption. On the other, how different is the prospect! How easy, how safe and honorable is the path before you! The English nation declare they are grossly injured by their representatives, and solicit your Majesty to exert your lawful prerogative, and give them an opportunity of recall-vent one of the three estates from encroaching ing a trust, which, they find, has been so scandalously abused. You are not to be told that the power of the House of Commons is not original, but delegated to them for the welfare of the people, from whom they received it. A question of right arises between the constituent and the representative body. By what authority shall it be decided? Will your Majesty interfere in a question in which you have properly no immediate concern? It would be a step equally odious and unnecessary. Shall the Lords be called upon to determine the rights and privileges of the Commons? They can not do it without a flagrant breach of the Constitution. Or will you refer it to the judges? They have often told your ancestors that the law of Parliament is above them. What party then remains, but to leave it to the people to determine for themselves? They alone are injured; and since there is no superior power to which the cause can be referred, they alone ought to determine. I do not mean to perplex you with a tedious argument upon a subject already so discussed, that inspiration could hardly throw a new light upon it. There are, however, two points of view in which it particularly imports your Majesty to consider the late proceedings of the House of Commons. By depriving a subject of his birthright, they have attributed to their own vote an authority equal to an act of the whole Legislature; and, though perhaps not with the same motives, have strictly followed the example of the Long Parliament, which first declared the regal office useless, and soon after, with as little ceremony, dissolved the House of Lords. The same pretended power which robs an English subject of his birthright, may rob an English King of his crown. In another view, the resolution of the House of Commons, apparently not so dangerous to your Majesty, is still more alarming to your people. Not contented with divesting one man of his right, they have arbitrarily conveyed that right to another. They have set aside a return as illegal, without daring to censure those officers who were particularly apprised of Mr. Wilkes's incapacity, not only by the declaration of the House, but expressly by the writ directed to them, and who nevertheless returned him as duly elected. They have re9 There is force in this remark. If there was any blame in the Middlesex election, it certainly rested with the returning officers. They ought to have known, better than the common people of Middlesex could be presumed to know, whether Mr. Wilkes was disqualified by his expulsion from the House. You have still an honorable part to act. The affections of your subjects may still be recovered. But, before you subdue their hearts, you must gain a noble victory over your own. Discard those little personal resentments which have too long directed your public conduct. Pardon this man the remainder of his punishment, and, if resentment still prevails, make it, what it should have been long since, an act, not of mercy, but contempt.1 He will soon fall back into his natural station-a silent senator, and hardly supporting the weekly eloquence of a newspaper. The gentle breath of peace would leave him on But they received the votes, and returned him as member, and then the House of Commons punished the electors by setting aside their votes, without a word of censure on the returning officers. within less than four months. This Letter probably 10 He was pardoned and released from prison convinced the King that he could no longer maintain the contest. A general illumination took place throughout London on the night following his release. His debts had been previously paid or compromised by the Society of the People's Rights. Wilkes was soon after chosen an alderman of London, and subsequently Lord Mayor. At the next general election in 1774, he was returned again as member for Middlesex, and took his seat without opposition. On the dismissal of Lord North's administration in 1782, the obnoxious resolutions which gave Colonel Luttrell his seat were expunged, on his own motion, from the journals of the House of Commons. nineteen days the Duke of Grafton was compelled to resign. But Junius and his friends were bitterly disappointed. The King had, indeed, the wisdom to remove the great source of to his Tory advisers; he placed Lord North at the head of affairs, and for twelve years persisted in his favorite measures, and especially his resolution to force taxation on America, until he drove her out of the empire. the surface, neglected and unremoved. It is only the tempest that lifts him from his place. Without consulting your minister, call together your whole council. Let it appear to the public that you can determine and act for your-contention by pardoning Wilkes; but he clung self. Come forward to your people. Lay aside the wretched formalities of a King, and speak to your subjects with the spirit of a man, and in the language of a gentleman. Tell them you have been fatally deceived. The acknowledgment will be no disgrace, but rather an honor to your understanding. Tell them you are determined to remove every cause of complaint against your government; that you will give your confidence to no man who does not possess the confidence of your subjects; and leave it to themselves to determine, by their conduct at a future election, whether or no it be in reality the general sense of the nation, that their rights have been arbitrarily invaded by the present House of Commons, and the Constitution betrayed. They will then do justice to their representatives and to themselves. These sentiments, sir, and the style they are conveyed in, may be offensive, perhaps, because they are new to you. Accustomed to the language of courtiers, you measure their affections by the vehemence of their expressions; and when they only praise you indirectly, you admire their sincerity. But this is not a time to trifle with your fortune. They deceive you, sir, who tell you that you have many friends, whose affections are founded upon a principle of personal attachThe first foundation of friendship is not the power of conferring benefits, but the equality with which they are received, and may be re- | turned. The fortune which made you a King forbade you to have a friend. It is a law of nature which can not be violated with impunity. The mistaken prince, who looks for friendship, will find a Favorite, and in that Favorite the ruin of his affairs. ment. Before leaving this letter, it will be proper to give a brief account of the celebrated trial to which it gave rise. Woodfall, the publisher, was prosecuted for a seditious libel, and brought before the Court of King's Bench on the 13th of June, 1770. Lord Mansfield, in charging the jury, told them "that there were only two points for their consideration: the first, the printing and publishing of the paper in question; the second, the sense and meaning of it. That as to the charges of its being malicious, seditious, &c., these were inferences of law. That, therefore, the printing and sense of the paper were alone what the jury had to consider of; and that, if the paper should really contain no breach of law, that was a matter which might afterward be moved in arrest of judgment." This put the prisoner completely in the power of the judges. The jury had no right to inquire into his motives or the real merits of the case. As the fact of publication was admitted, and the meaning of the words was clear, they must pronounce him guilty, although perfectly satisfied that he had spoken the truth, and had been governed by upright intentions. This, certainly, made the trial by jury in cases of libel a mere farce. In the present instance, the jury got round the difficulty by bringing in a verdict, "Guilty of the printing and publishing only." The question now arose, "What is the legal effect of this finding?" The Attorney General claimed that it was to be taken as a conviction; the counsel of Woodfall, that it amounted to an acquittal. The case was argued at length, and the court decided for neither party. They set the verdict aside, and ordered a new trial. This, however, was the same to Woodfall as an acquittal; for it was perfectly well known that no jury could ever be found in the city of London to return a verdict against the publisher. The matter was therefore dropped, The people of England are loyal to the house of Hanover, not from a vain preference of one family to another, but from a conviction that the establishment of that family was necessary to the support of their civil and religious liberties. This, sir, is a principle of allegiance equally solid and rational, fit for Englishmen to adopt, and well worthy of your Majesty's encouragement. We can not long be deluded by national distinc-and Junius came off victorious. tions. The name of Stuart, of itself, is only contemptible; armed with the sovereign authority, their principles were formidable. The Prince, who imitates their conduct, should be warned by their example; and while he plumes himself upon the security of his title to the crown, should remember that, as it was acquired by one revolution, it may be lost by another. JUNIUS. This letter was published just before the Christmas holidays, and immediately after their close, Parliament commenced its session. Lord Chatham came out at once as leader of the Whigs, now united into one body, and within Much blame was thrown upon Lord Mansfield for this decision. The subject was brought before the House of Lords by Lord Chatham, and Lord Mansfield said in reply, "His Lordship tells the House that doctrines no less new than dangerous have been inculcated in this court, and that, particularly in a charge which I delivered to the jury on Mr. Woodfall's trial, my directions were contrary to law, repugnant to practice, and injurious to the dearest liberties of the people. This is an alarming picture, my Lords; it is drawn with great parade, and colored to affect the passions amazingly. Unhappily, however, for the painter, it wants the essential circumstance of truth in the design, and must, like many other political pictures, be thrown, not- | withstanding the reputation of the artist, among the miserable daubings of faction. So far, my Lords, is the accusation without truth, that the directions now given to juries are the same that they have ever been. There is no novelty introduced-no chicanery attempted; nor has there, till very lately, been any complaint of the integrity of the King's Bench." The opinion of enlightened jurists at the present day, as to the merits of the case, is expressed by Lord Campbell in his Lives of the Chief Justices, vol. ii., p. 480. field had laid down; and, in laying it down, he not only followed the example of his immediate predecessors, but he was supported by the unanimous opinion of his brethren who sat by him. There was no pretense for representing him as a daring innovator, who, slavishly wishing to please the government, tried to subvert trial by jury, and to extinguish the liberty of the press." the most cruel insinuations. But he overshot his mark, and fell into the grossest errors, especially in his grand controversy about the right of Lord Mansfield to bail a man named Eyre, in which, as Lord Campbell remarks, “Junius was egregiously in the wrong, clearly showing that he was not a lawyer, his mistakes not being designedly made for disguise, but palpably proceeding from an ignorant man affecting knowledge." Junius, as might be expected, attacked Lord Mansfield soon after in the most vehement terms. If he had confined himself to the legal question and the rights of juries, no one could have condemned him for using strong language; but he "Lord Mansfield, in the course of these tri- followed his ordinary method of assailing charals, had done nothing to incur moral blame. I acter and motives. He revived the exploded think his doctrine-that the jury were only to story of Mansfield's having drunk the Pretendfind the fact of publication and the innuendos-er's health on his knees. He tortured him by contrary to law as well as liberty. His grand argument for making the question of 'libel or not' exclusively one of law, that the defendant may demur or move in arrest of judgment, and so refer it to the court, admits of the easy answer, that, although there may be a writing set out in the information as libelous which it could under no circumstances be criminal to publish, yet that an information may set out a paper the publication of which may or may not be crim--Ibid., p. 402. inal, according to the intention of the defendant and the circumstances under which it is pub-ive of good. It roused the public mind to the lished. Therefore, supposing judges to be ever so pure, upright, and intelligent, justice could not be done by leaving to them the criminality or innocence of the paper alleged to be libelous, as a mere abstract question of law, to be decided by reading the record. Nevertheless, there were various authorities for the rule which Lord Mans The trial of Woodfall was ultimately product rights of juries. A similar case came up in 1784, when the Dean of St. Asaph was tried for a libel; and at this time Mr. Erskine made his celebrated argument on the subject, which prepared the way for an act of Parliament, declaring the right of juries to decide on the law as well as the facts in cases of libel. LETTER TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF GRAFTON,1 MY LORD,-If I were personally your enemy, I might pity and forgive you. You have every claim to compassion that can arise from misery and distress. The condition you are reduced to would disarm a private enemy of his resentment, and leave no consolation to the most vindictive spirit, but that such an object as you are would disgrace the dignity of revenge. But, in the relation you have borne to this country, you have 1 Dated February 14th, 1770. This Letter must have been commenced within a week after the res ignation of the Duke of Grafton. It is Junius' first shout of triumph over the fall of his adversary. He evidently regarded Lord North's ministry as a mere modification of the Bedford party; and, as he always underrated his talents, he now treats him, at the close of this Letter, with great contempt, expressing (what he undoubtedly felt) a firm conviction that the whole concern must soon fall to pieces, and the Whigs be called into office. This is one of the most finished productions of Junius. It has more eloquence than the Letter to the King, and would deserve our unqualified admiration, if it were as just as it is eloquent. no title to indulgence; and, if I had followed the dictates of my own opinion, I never should have allowed you the respite of a moment. In your public character, you have injured every subject of the empire; and, though an individual is not authorized to forgive the injuries done to society, he is called upon to assert his separate share in the public resentment. I submitted, however, to the judgment of men, more moderate, perhaps more candid than myself. For my own part, I do not pretend to understand those prudent forms of decorum, those gentle rules of discretion, which some men endeavor to unite with the conduct of the greatest and most hazardous affairs. Engaged in the defense of an honorable cause, I would take a decisive part. I should scorn to provide for a future retreat, or to keep terms with a man who preserves no measures with the public. Neither the abject submission of deserting his post in the hour of danger, nor even the sacred shield of cowardice,* 2 Sacro tremuere timore. Every coward pretends to be planet-struck. |