hand which hath driven us to it, or whether we shall follow the patriot voice which has not ceased to warn us of our dangers, and which would still declare the way to safety and to honour. LETTER XXX. TO THE PRINTER OF THE PUBLIC ADVERTISER. SIR, August 5, 1768. An unmerited outrage offered to a great or a good man naturally excites some emotions of resentment even in hearts that have the least esteem for virtue. At particular moments the worst of men forget their principles, and pay to superior worth an involuntary tribute of sympathy or applause. We ought to think well of human nature when we see how frequently the most profligate minds are generous without reflection. But if a case should happen wherein a character not merely of private virtue, but of public merit, receives an insult equally indecent and ungrateful, this common concern is increased by that share of interest which every man claims to himself in the public welfare. A government shameless or ill-advised enough to treat with disregard the obligation due to public services, not only sets a most pernicious example to its subjects, but does a flagrant injury to society, which every member of it ought to resent. Reflections such as these crowded upon my mind the moment that I heard that the late commander-in-chief in America had been dismissed without ceremony from his government of Virginia. I was grieved to see such a man so treated, but when I considered this step as an omen of the real resolution of the ministry with respect to America, I forgot, as he himself will do, the private injury, and lamented nothing but the public misfortune. At a time when the most backward of the King's servants have been compelled to acknowledge the necessity of vigorous measures, when these measures are held out to the nation with a declaratory assurance that now at last we are *Mr. G. Grenville's. See this subject continued in Miscellaneous Letter, No. 31, and note, p. 198. determined, the resolution to deprive Sir Jeffery Amherst of his post in America cannot but be received as a direct contradiction to all those professions. If they had sincerely meant to do their duty to their country; if they had really adopted measures of vigour, and wished to carry them into execution, instead of depriving him of his post, they would have solicited him to return to America, and take upon him the conduct of those measures. His prudence and moderation are as well known as his spirit and firmness, and who will dare to say that he would have refused an employment which the service of his King and country called upon him to accept? He went to America in circumstances as little favourable as the present; he met an enemy at all times formidable, and at that juncture strengthened by success. He conquered that enemy, and united the dominion of the whole continent to Great Britain. In every light he was the man to have been chosen, if the ministry had really meant to execute their own resolution with vigour. But if it be their design to surrender every point to America, they could not have acted more consistently with such a plan than by dismissing Sir Jeffery Amherst from his post, and appointing Lord Boutetort to succeed him. No collusive bargain could have been made with the former, nor any base unworthy compliances expected from him. He had honour as much as any man to lose, nor even felt the necessity of repairing a broken fortune. Had he been entrusted with a command upon this important occasion, he would have executed the declared, not the secret purpose of the administration. With such a character, it is easy to see how unfit he was to be trusted with the conduct of measures destined to perish at their birth. But, although he might not be entitled to the confidence of the King's servants, in what instance has he deserved such ungrateful treatment? Could they find no other man to mark out to the public as an object of slight and disrespect? Could the wantonness of their power find no other way of providing for a needy dependant? Surely, Sir, the choice was at least injudicious. Lord Hillsborough might wave found some more honourable method of distinguishing his entrance into administration; nor do I think it a very favourable omen to Lord Boutetort, that his patrons have fixed upon Virginia as a retreat for his distresses. Seven years are too many to spare out of a life of sixty, to say nothing of the rarity of a man's returning from that country and surviving the next sessions. LETTER XXXI. L. L. TO THE PRINTER OF THE PUBLIC ADVERTISER. SIR, August 6, 1768. WHETHER it be matter of honour or reproach, it is at least a singular circumstance, that whoever is hardy enough to maintain the cause of Great Britain against subjects who disown her authority, or to raise his voice in defence of the laws and constitution, is immediately pointed out to the public for Mr. Grenville's friend. From such language one would think that the order of things was inverted, and that conspiracy had changed its nature. Mr. Grenville and his friends it seems are suspected of some dangerous designs, not to destroy but to preserve the laws and constitution of their country. This is certainly a reproach of the latest invention. I know there are men whose characters are safe against suspicions of this sort, and who form their friendships upon other more useful maxims. But whether it be owing to the weakness of his understanding or to the simplicity of his heart, that he pursues a conduct so useful to himself and so suspicious to the administration, it is surely a pardonable error, and what an Englishman may yet forgive. It is true he professes doctrines which would be treason in America, but, in England at least, he has the laws of his side, and if it be a crime to support the supremacy of the British legislature, the Sovereign, the Lords, and Commons are as guilty as he is. The ministry indeed have no share in the charge, and it would be uncandid not to confess that their regard for the honour and interest of this country is upon the same level with their friendship for Mr. Grenville*. * Some speculators have been thoughtless enough to conjecture Mr. George Grenville to have been Junius. Unluckily for this hypothesis, Mr. Grenville died in November, 1770, which was soon after Junius began to write under that For my own part, whatever your correspondents Moderator and Tandem may think of me, I shall content myself with some interior feelings which I fancy they are not much acquainted with; nor will I perplex them with a language they are incapable of understanding. Whether I am determined by motives which an honest man might profess, or by such as those gentlemen usually act upon, is a point that will not admit of demonstration. I shall therefore leave their principles out of the question, and try what their arguments amount to. Moderator and I are, for the most part, agreed. He allows "that government is sunk into a contemptible state; that their measures have failed of success, and is convinced that if the reverse had been practised, the mischief had been avoided." What conclusion his understanding will draw from these premises I do not know; but I think the most violent enemy of the present administration could not have argued more strongly for a change of hands and a change of measures. The author of the second letter, finding nothing that will answer his purpose in the present state of things, is obliged to carry us back to the original question of the right and ex signature. Mr. Grenville was a respectable man and statesman, more exemplary for official routine than extraordinary abilities, and had passed through all the great offices, from that of treasurer of the navy in 1754 to that of prime minister in 1763. Burke describes him in panegyrical but somewhat exaggerated terms in his speech on American taxation in April, 1774. "Undoubtedly Mr. Grenville was a first-rate figure in this country. With a masculine understanding, and a stout and resolute heart, he had an application undissipated and unwearied. He took public business not as a duty which he was to fulfil, but as a pleasure he was to enjoy; and he seemed to have no delight out of the House, except in such things as some way related to the business that was to be done within it. If he was ambitious, I will say this for him, his ambition was of a noble and generous strain. It was to raise himself, not by the low pimping politics of a court, but to win his way to power through the laborious gradations of public service, and to secure to himself a well-earned rank in parliament by a thorough knowledge of its constitution and a perfect practice in all its business."-After retiring from the premiership in 1765, Mr. Grenville did not again hold office. This accounts for the little knowledge Junius admits he had of him; but he coincided with Mr. Grenville on the right of England to tax the Americans, dissenting from the metaphysical distinction drawn by Lord Chatham between the right of the mother country to govern but not to tax the colonies. No signature is attached to the above communication, and, judging from it political opinions, it may have emanated from Junius.-ED. pediency of taxing America. I shall not enter into the question of right, because it has been already determined by the legislature, to which an Englishman still owes some degree of submission. For the matter of expediency, an advocate for the present ministry seems to me to arraign his patrons when he argues against it. One part of them uniformly concurred with Mr. Grenville in forming the Stamp Act, and in opposing the repeal of it. The other, to serve the purposes of party, repealed that act, yet showed by their conduct that they approved of the equitable principle on which it was founded, that America should contribute a little to the support of the public expense. The repeal of the Stamp Act has been followed by other acts more offensive to the colonies, more directly exerting the right of taxation, and which will hardly be executed without some extraordinary efforts on the part of government. Was the act for suspending the assembly of New York recommended by Mr. Grenville? Or was it he who advised the duties on paper, glass, &c., imported into the colonies? No, Sir, his successors have paid him the highest compliment by imitating the system which they had affected to condemn; and in fact they have carried his principles further than he did, or probably than he would have carried them. But it is the natural defect of a weak divided administration, that they can neither resolve with moderation, nor execute with firmness. As to the questions which your last correspondent puts to me with a sort of heat and petulance not very decent, one plain answer will, I believe, be sufficient. If the pretensions of the colonies had not been abetted by something worse than a faction here, the Stamp Act would have executed itself. Every clause of it was so full and explicit that it wanted no further instruction; nor was it of that nature that required a military hand to carry it into execution. For the truth of this answer I am ready to appeal even to the Americans themselves. As to the merit of having foreseen the unavoidable consequences of an inconsistent irresolute system of measures, I shall place it as low as your correspondent can desire. Even he might have foreseen what has happened without waiting for the event. But to foretell those consequences; to speak truth to the nation; to warn even an adversary of his |