LETTER LIX.

TO THE PRINTER OF THE PUBLIC ADVERTISER.

SIR, September 7, 1769. I FIND myself unexpectedly married in the newspapers, without my knowledge or consent. Since I am fated to be a husband, I hope at least the lady will perform the principal duty of a wife. Marriages, they say, are made in heaven, but they are consummated upon earth, and since Junia has adopted my name, she cannot, in common matrimonial decency, refuse to make me a tender of her person. Politics are too barren a subject for a new married couple. I should be glad to furnish her with one more fit for a lady to handle, and better suited to the natural dexterity of her sex. In short, if Junia be young and handsome, she will have no reason to complain of my method of conducting an argument. I abominate all tergiversation in discourse, and she may be assured that whatever I advance, whether it be weak or forcible, shall, at any rate, be directly in point. It is true I am a strenuous advocate for liberty and property, but when these rights are invaded by a pretty woman, I am neither able to defend my money nor my freedom. The divine right of beauty is the only one an Englishman ought to acknowledge, and a pretty woman the only tyrant he is not authorized to resist.

JUNIUS*.

* Junius repented that he had written this letter as soon as it had appeared. He regarded it as idle and improper; and it was on this occasion that he addressed to Mr. Woodfall the private note, No. 8, dated September 10, 1769; in consequence of which the following observations appeared in the notice to correspondents in the Public Advertiser of the 11th of September :

"We have some reason to suspect that the last letter signed Junius, inserted in this paper of Thursday last, was not written by the real Junius, though we imagine it to have been sent by some one of his waggish friends, who has taken great pains to write in a manner similar to that of Junius, which observation escaped us at that time. The printer takes the liberty to hint that it will not do a second time."

LETTER LX.

AUGUR ON THE GRAFTON MINISTRY.

MR. WOODFALL,

September 8, 1769. present

Ir is hard to determine whether the actions of the ministry more excite abhorrence and indignation, or the writings of their advocates contempt and ridicule: every action of the former is an invasion of our liberty or our property; every line wrote in their defence by the latter is an insult to our understanding, and a base mockery of our sufferings. I have never yet known a bad cause made better by a bad defence. I cannot conceive what induces his Grace of Grafton to employ such a set of wretches to laugh at us, whilst we are burning at the stake to which he has tied us. It is as void of policy as it is full of inhumanity. Oppression is more easily borne than insult; and the Duke of Grafton, with his new directors, the Bloomsbury gang, may find that it is dangerous to despise those whom he has deeply injured. Why does he let loose upon us his troops of fools and madmen, and buffoons and bullies? He would do more wisely to employ them in their proper places, reserving them to excite the mirth, and add to the wit, urbanity, and elegance of the midnight festivity of his kindred and friends, Weymouth, Gower, and Rigby, at Bedford House.

If the freeholders of this country, alarmed at the invasion of their last and dearest right, the freedom of election, beg in the humblest terms for redress, Poetikastos dances before them in a fool's coat, squirts dirty water in their faces, and then cries out to the great joy, and with the loud applause of the gang, You are redressed." To every other complaint, whether of the disgraces which we suffer abroad, or of the oppressions which we feel at home, whether the cry be for property ravished from us, for our liberties infringed, for the laws perverted, for the constitution overturned, we have much the same answer. Silurus is let loose from his cell to vent his madness, and covers us with his filth. Pericles * stands by him calling out rogue and scoundrel; and then with one voice

* Poetikastos, Silurus, and Pericles were writers in the Public Advertiser in favour of administration.

the minister who employs, and the wretches who are employed, cry out, "We have defeated them; they never dare appear again; we have hanged them up to public scorn; you are a coward, cries one; I will cudgel you, says another; I will lay you a bet of 14,000 guineas, bawls a third."*

Does the Duke of Grafton really think that such actions as his are sufficiently defended by such arguments as these? Are those the lawyers whom he has retained against that dreadful day-for that day will come-when a brave, a haughty, and a spirited, though patient, people, shall demand vengeance on his head for all the disgraces and injuries which he has heaped upon theirs? Are these to be his intercessors to a misguided and betrayed king for mercy? Enjoy with your associates, my Lord, their buffoonery and their scurrility whilst you may: the day is not far off-if the Almighty has not in his wrath given up this country to that worst of punishments, that most intolerable of all tyrannies, the government of insolence without spirit, violence without vigour, ambition without dignity, obstinacy without resolution, and ignorance without diffidence-the day is not far off, when these insults will be retorted most severely, and humanity itself will not be able to keep them from your head, though that head should be on the block.

AUGUR

LETTER LXI.

A. B. TO THE DUKE OF GRAFTON†.

MY LORD, November 10, 1769. THE facility with which you abandoned your earliest connections in friendship and politics was, I doubt not, a leading

* A challenge had been absurdly given to Junius by several writers in the Public Advertiser, as well as by Sir William Draper; and one correspondent, as here referred to, had the egregious folly to propose a bet of 14,000 guineas, being, as he stated, his whole fortune, "that he could produce in six months a counter-petition, signed by 4,000 freeholders, all men of sense, begging his Majesty to confine the ringleaders of the opposition, and bind them over to their good behaviour."

This letter was printed by the desire of Junius in the Public Advertiser, but was not written by him. See Private Letter, No. 11. It was, however,

recommendation to establish your credit at St. James's. A gracious discerning prince, who, even at the moment of his accession, had fortitude enough to get the better of every predilection which he might be supposed to have inherited from his ancestors in favour of the friends of the House of Hanover, must have observed with pleasure that your Grace was equally ready to desert the friends who contributed most to your advancement, and to adopt new principles of government. I will not complain of a change of system, for which you had so powerful a precedent, and which you have found so favourable to your ambition. But there are rules of decency, my Lord, which a wiser man would have observed, even in the grossest violation of morals. There is a certain sort of hostilities which is forbidden by the laws of war between nations, and by the laws of enmity between individuals. The contentions of party have given a fashionable latitude to the principles of modern morality; but still, my Lord, there are some characters too great and venerable to be insulted; there is yet a certain breach of decorum, which the public will not submit to. Was the Duke of Rutland the only man in this country at whose expense you could gratify Lord Denbigh? One would think, my Lord, that if his uniform adherence to the principles of the revolution, his steady attachment to the House of Hanover, and the important services which he and his family have rendered to that House, could possibly be forgotten, there was yet something in his age, his rank, his personal character, and private virtues, which might have entitled him to respect. Was it necessary, my Lord, to pursue him into his own county on purpose to insult him? Was it proper, was it decent, that while a Duke of Rutland is lord lieutenant, the Earl of Denbigh's recommendation should govern the county of Leicester*? Had

so generally supposed to have been his, that Junius himself thought it necessary to request the printer to publish the following contradiction in the same journal, November 17. "We can assure the public that the letter signed A. B., relative to the Duke of Rutland, is not written by the author of Junius."

* It refers to certain justices of the peace having been made at the request of Lord Denbigh, by a commission of the Lord Chancellor (Camden) and others, for the county of Leicester, without consulting the Duke of Rutland, who was lord lieutenant, and who, ex officio, ought to have been honoured with the nomination.

Lord Denbigh no friends in Leicestershire but rank Tories to recommend for the commission of the peace? And is it under a prince who owes his crown to the Whig interest of England that a minister dares to send such a mandate to the Duke of Rutland? I know his Grace's spirit, and doubt not of his returning you an answer proper for you and for himself.

United as you are, my Lord, with men whose concern for the safety of the church, and whose zeal for the prerogative of the crown has been so often unluckily mistaken for simple jacobitism, I take for granted you are as well acquainted with their history as with their principles. You are able to tell us, and surely the public has a right to expect it from you, by what species of merit the Earl of Denbigh has contrived to make himself so distinguished a favourite at court. Was it the notorious attachment of his family to the House of Hanover, or his own personal accomplishments? Was it his fortune that made him respectable, or his beggary that made him submissive? Was it the generous exertion of his great abilities in parliament, or the humble assiduity of his attendance at Lord Bute's levee? Was it the manly firmness of his personal appearance, or the pliant politeness of his temper? Was it the independent dignity with which he maintains the rank of a peer, or the complaisance with which he accepts and executes the honourable office of a spy? Whatever have been his merits or services, they are undoubtedly of a complexion very different from those of the Duke of Rutland.

His Grace has now wisely exchanged that busy scene, in which he never appeared but with honour, for an hospitable retirement. His age will not permit us to hope that he can long be the object of the spite of such a creature as Lord Denbigh, nor of the scorn and insult of such a minister as your Grace. But he will leave a family, my Lord, whose principles of freedom are hereditary, from whose resentment you will have everything to apprehend. As for himself, I shall only say, that if it were possible for the views and wishes of the Tories to succeed, if it were possible for them to place a Stuart once more upon the throne, their warmest hopes and ambition might be disappointed. He too, like another judicious prince, might think it the best policy of his government to choose his friends and favourites from among the declared, notorious, determined enemies of his family. The Tories who placed