Chatham in Mr. Wilkes's letter to the Duke of Grafton. Without undertaking the defence of that gentleman's conduct

parliament, it seems to be likewise true of the first orator, or rather the first comedian, of our age, non displicuisse illi jocos, sed non contigisse.

"I will now submit to your Grace if there was not something peculiarly base and perfidious in Mr. Pitt's calling me a blasphemer of my God for those very verses, at a time when I was absent, and dangerously ill from an affair of honour. The charge, too, he knew was false, for the whole ridicule of those two pieces was confined to certain mysteries, which formerly the unplaced and unpensioned Mr. Pitt did not think himself obliged even to affect to believe. He added another charge equally unjust, that I was the libeller of my King, though he was sensible that I never wrote a single line disrespectful to the sacred person of my Sovereign, but had only attacked the despotism of his ministers, with the spirit becoming a good subject and zealous friend of his country. The reason of this perfidy was plain. He was then beginning to pay homage to the Scottish idol, and I was the most acceptable sacrifice he could offer at the shrine of BUTE. History scarcely gives so remarkable a change. He was a few years ago the mad seditious tribune of the people, insulting his Sovereign, even in his capital city; now he is the abject crouching deputy of the proud Scot, who he declared in parliament wanted wisdom, and held principles incompatible with freedom; a most ridiculous character surely for a statesman, and the subject of a free kingdom, but the proper composition for a favourite. Was it possible for me after this to write a suppliant letter to Lord Chatham? I am the first to pronounce myself most unworthy of a pardon if I could have obtained it on those terms.

Although I declare, my Lord, that the conscious pride of virtue makes me look down with contempt on a man who could be guilty of this baseness, who could in the lobby declare that I must be supported, and in the House on the same day desert and revile me, yet I will on every occasion do justice to the minister. He has served the public in all those points where the good of the nation coincided with his own private views, and in no other. I venerate the memory of the secretary, and I think it an honour to myself that I steadily supported in parliament an administration the most successful we ever had, and which carried the glory of the nation to the highest pitch in every part of the world. He found his country almost in despair. He raised the noble spirit of England, and strained every nerve against our enemies. His plans, when in power, were always great, though in direct opposition to the declarations of his whole life when out of power. The invincible bravery of the British troops gave success even to the most rash, the most extravagant, the most desperate of his projects. He saw early the hostile intentions of Spain, and if the written advice had been followed, a very few weeks had then probably closed the last general war; although the merit of that advice was more the merit of his noble brother than his own. After the omnipotence of Lord Bute in 1761 had forced Mr. Pitt to retire from his Majesty's councils, and the cause was declared by himself to be our conduct relative to Spain, I had the happiness of setting that affair in so clear and advantageous a light that he expressed the most entire satisfaction and particular obligations to my friendship. I do not, however, make this a

or character, permit me to observe that he was the instrument, and a useful one, to the party, therefore should not have

claim of merit to Mr. Pitt. It was my duty, from the peculiar advantages of information I then had."

In answer to these strictures Sir William Draper, in the letter subscribed W. D., and which is too long to be copied verbatim, quotes several of Mr. Wilkes's previous declarations in favour of Lord Chatham while Mr. Pitt, and concludes as follows:

"The letter asserts also that Lord Chatham is now the abject crouching deputy of Lord Bute, who he declared in parliament wanted wisdom and held principles incompatible with freedom. The world knows nothing of this abject crouching deputed minister but from Mr. Wilkes's single affirmation; but we all know that his Majesty has been pleased to call Lord Chatham again to the ministry: if Lord Bute supports him in it, he gives the noblest proof of generosity and greatness of soul, and has revenged himself in the finest manner upon Lord Chatham for those expressions, and affords the strongest proof that he does not want wisdom or hold principles incompatible with freedom. What greater proof of wisdom can he give than in supporting that person who is the most capable of doing good to his country, and has upon all occasions approved himself the most zealous protector of its liberties? But I beg pardon; upon a late occasion, indeed, Lord Chatham showed himself to be no friend to liberty; he was so very tyrannical, as well as Lord Camden, that he denied some traders the right, liberty, and privilege of starving his fellow-citizens, by exporting all the corn out of the kingdom, for which he has met with his reward, and been as much abused as if he himself had been guilty of starving them. Is there no Tarpeian rock for such a tyrant?

"Mr. Wilkes has now done with Lord Chatham, leaving him to the poor consolation of a place, a peerage, and a pension; for which, he says, he has sold the confidence of a great nation. But I cannot take leave of, or have done with, Mr. Wilkes, without making a few observations upon this paragraph: Mr. Wilkes is a great jester; in this place he cannot possibly be serious; for as to the pension, I think I cannot explain it better to my countrymen than in Mr. Wilkęs's own words, August 12, 1762.

66 6

I must, in compliance with a few vulgar writers, call the inadequate reward given to Mr. Pitt, for as great services as ever were performed by a subject, a pension, although the grant is not during pleasure, and therefore cannot create any undue unconstitutional influence. In the same light we are to consider the Dukes of Cumberland's and Marlborough's, Prince Ferdinand's, and Admiral Hawke's, Mr. Onslow's, &c. &c. &c. I was going to call it the King's gold box; for Mr. Pitt having before received the most obliging marks of regard from the public, the testimony of his Sovereign only remained wanting.'

"Now as Mr. Wilkes has so fully set forth the nature of this pension, I cannot think it will at all lessen the confidence of the nation in Lord Chatham: it may very possibly lessen their confidence in Mr. Wilkes, whe has contradicted himself so furiously, and perhaps destroy that idea of consistency which the gentleman boasts of in his letter to the Duke of

been sacrificed by it. He served them, perhaps, with too much zeal; but such is the reward which the tools of faction usually receive, and in some measure deserve, when they are imprudent enough to hazard everything in support of other men's ambition.

I cannot admit that, because Mr. Pitt was respected and honoured a few years ago, the Earl of Chatham therefore deserves to be so now; or that a description, which might have suited him at one part of his life, must of necessity be the only one applicable to him at another. It is barely possible that a very honest commoner may become a very corrupt and worthless peer; and I am inclined to suspect that Mr. C. D. will find but few people credulous enough to believe that either Mr. Pitt or Mr. Pulteney, when they accepted of a title, did not, by that action, betray their friends, their country, and, in every honourable sense, themselves. Mr. C. D. wilfully misrepresents the cause of that censure, which was very justly thrown upon Lord Chatham when the exportation of corn was prohibited by proclamation. The measure itself was necessary, and the more necessary from the scandalous delay of the ministry in calling the parliament together; but to maintain that the proclamation was legal, and that there was a suspending power lodged in the crown, was such an outrage to the common sense of mankind, and such a daring attack upon the constitution, as a free people ought never to forgive. The man who maintained those doctrines ought to have had the Tarpeian rock or a gibbet for his reward. Another gentleman, upon that occasion, had spirit and patriotism enough to declare, even in a respectable assembly, that when he advised the proclamation, he did it with the strongest conviction of its being illegal; but he rested his defence upon the unavoidable necessity of the case, and submitted himself to the judgment of his country. This noble conduct deserved the applause and gratitude of the nation, while that of the Earl of Chatham and his miserable understrappers deserved nothing but detestation and contempt.

POPLICOLA.

Grafton, where he assures his Grace that, however unfashionable such a declaration may be, consistency shall never depart from his character.' The reader has the proofs before him, and will judge of it accordingly. W. D."

LETTER III.

TO THE PRINTER OF THE PUBLIC ADVERTISER.

June 24, 1767. Accedere matrem muliebri impotentiâ; serviendum fœminæ, duobusque insuper nebulonibus, qui rempublicam interim premant, quandoque distrahant *.-Tacitus 10 Annalium.

THE uncertain state of politics in this country sets all the speculations of the press at defiance. To talk of modern ministers, or to examine their conduct, would be to reason without data; for whether it be owing to the real simple innocence of doing nothing, or to a happy mysteriousness in concealing their activity, we know as little of the services they have performed since it became their lot to appear in the Gazette, as we did of their persons or characters before. They seem to have come together by a sort of fortuitous concourse, and have hitherto done nothing else but jumble and jostle one another, without being able to settle into any one regular or consistent figure. I am not, however, such an atheist in politics as to suppose that there is not somewhere an original creating cause, which drew these atoms forth into existence; but it seems the utmost skill and cunning of that secret governing hand could go no further. To create or foment confusion, to sacrifice the honour of a king, or to destroy the happiness of a nation, requires no talent but a natural itch for doing mischief. We have seen it performed for years successively, with a wantonness of triumph, by a man who had neither abilities nor personal interest, nor even common personal courage +. It has been possible for a notorious coward,

"To these reflections the public added the dread of a mother raging with all the impotence of female ambition: a whole people, they urged, were to be enslaved by a woman and two juveniles, who in the beginning would hang heavy on the state, and in the end distract and rend it to pieces by their own dissensions."

The notion that the influence of the Earl of Bute, who is here alluded to, continued long after his retirement-that he formed the "influence behind the throne greater than the throne itself"-was long a popular delusion encouraged by faction. It was only suspected, never supported by any proof; and General Conway, while Secretary of State, denied that he "had ever seen, felt, or discovered," any such influence. The imputation was explicitly denied by Lord Mountstuart, the Earl's son, who, in a letter written

skulking under a petticoat, to make a great nation the prey of his avarice and ambition. But I trust the time is not very distant when we shall see him dragged forth from his retirement, and forced to answer severely for all the mischiefs he hath brought upon us.

It is worth while to consider, though perhaps not safe to point out, by what arts it hath been possible for him to maintain himself so long in power, and to screen himself from national justice. Some of them have been obvious enough; the rest may without difficulty be guessed at. But whatever they are, it is not above a twelvemonth ago since they might have all been defeated, and the venomous spider itself caught and trampled on in its own webs. It was then his good fortune to corrupt one man, from whom we least of all expected so base an apostacy*. Who, indeed, could have suspected that it should ever consist with the spirit or understanding of that person to accept of a share of power under a pernicious court minion, whom he himself had affected to detest or despise, as much as he knew he was detested and despised by the whole nation? I will not censure him for the avarice of a pension, nor the melancholy ambition of a title. These were objects which he perhaps looked up to, though the rest of the world thought them far beneath his acceptance. But, to become the stalking-horse of a stallion; to shake hands with a Scotchman at the hazard of catching all his infamy; to fight under his auspices against the constitution; and to

in October, 1778, declared that "he (Lord Bute) does therefore authorize me to say, that he declares upon his solemn word of honour that he has not had the honour of waiting on his Majesty but at his levee or drawing-room; nor has he presumed to offer any advice or opinion concerning the disposition of offices, or the conduct of measures, either directly or indirectly, by himself or any other, from the time when the late Duke of Cumberland was consulted on the arrangement of a ministry in 1765 to the present hour." Lord Bute had neither the abilities nor the ambition of a statesman; his sympathies were chiefly limited to the Princess-Dowager of Wales and the purlieus of the court, and did not extend to national affairs.-ED.

* For the reasons assigned on the authorship of Poplicola's letters, this attack on the Earl of Chatham renders it unlikely that Anti-Sejanus was Junius. Chatham's peerage and pension appear for a time to have lessened his popularity, and this is said to have been the Machiavellian result Lord Bute intended by the grant of them. But it was only a temporary loss, and Pitt's great and popular talents soon raised him above the obscuration of his coronet.-ED.