LETTER VIII. TO THE DUKE OF GRAFTON. WHEN JUNIUS closed his correspondence with Sir William Draper, he was impatient to aim at a nobler quarry. The Duke of Grafion was now principal minister, or First Lord of the Treasury. He stood at the head of those whom this writer wished to frighten from the helm of affairs. But for the interposition of Sir William Draper, and the discussion of the character of Lord Granby, the duke would probably have been singled out, the first, for a particular attack. Although writing these Letters, evidently, upon a preconceived and regular plan, yet JUNIUS had so settled this plan with himself, that he could seize, towards its accomplishment, in any part, whatever new events should rise upon the public notice, while he was proceeding in the series of his epistolary invectives. He, in this Letter, took occasion to open his attack on the Duke of Grafton, by joining in the outcry of popular resentment, on account of a pardon granted to a chairman, who had been condemned for murder, and whom the po pulace of London wished rather to have seen hanged. The circumstances of the case are worthy of being here mentioned somewhat in detail. The resignation of Mr. Pitt and Lord Temple, upon the rejection of the former's advice to declare war on Spain, was perhaps fully justified", by the information and the views on which that advice was founded. But the resignation of those ministers, was made the signal for raising the outrageous clamour of unpopularity against the government of the sovereign, whose councils they had forsaken. When the Duke of Newcastle, and his dependents, at length reluctantly followed their example, a new agency was added to increase the bluster of the storm. The populace of London and Westminster would not, of themselves, have easily become prompt to seditious tumults, against the sway of a young monarch of an interesting person, and the fairest private character. But the discontented great openly encouraged, to a certain length, the murmurs and tumults of the people; and what they them selves would not openly do to provoke those tumults and murmurs, that they contrived to have done more secretly by busy agitators, and ano nymous nymous writings. The North Briton, the work of John Wilkes, assisted by Charles Churchill and Lord Temple, was admirably addressed to every popular prejudice and passion, and contributed, therefore, in an extraordinary degree, to inflame both high and low, especially about the metropolis, with mingled rage and contempt against the government. When the famous Forty-fifth Number of that pa per appeared, the ministry thought they saw the occasion which they: desired, to have arrived. They began their proceedings against its author, by a measure which, though its use had been exemplified by the Whigs at the height of their power, was a violation of the funda mental laws of the constitution. This measure was the issuing of a general warrant; in the trial of the validity of which, the courts of law gave the triumph to Wilkes. Nothing animates vulgar ferocity and turbulence more than success. The government became, therefore, doubly unpopular, after the courts of law had, in one instance, declared against it. The Whigs, in opposition, saw with joy the unpopularity of the ministry; for they naturally believed, that a young king, desirous of the love of his people, and personally deserving it, would not fail to dismiss his present ministers and favourites, if he should once be convinced, that they, and they alone, made him odious to his subjects. Wilkes's imprudence soon reversed his triumph. He was expelled the House of Commons, and prosecuted to outlawry before a court of justice. Yet the popular ferment did not subside, nor could the tumultuous spirit of the people be easily reduced under the proper restraints. There had been irregularities in the renewed proceedings, against the author of the North Briton, which, arising from nothing but imprudence and want of address in the ministers, were by the art of opposition represented to the people as indications of a settled design to overthrow the national liberties. By various acts, almost all the Whigs in the opposition, directly or indirectly, engaged never to take a part in the administration, without procuring a reversal of rehat had been done against Wilkes, and without compensating him for his sufferings in rehat was esteemed to be a public cause. On the other hand, for a while, no party would be admitted into administration, without engaging the principles and the consequences of the prosecu tion of Wilkes. The Marquis of Rockingham's administration, of 1765, were reduced to the humiliation of pensioning Wilkes abroad, that they might not lose, by his return upon them, either the king or people. When the Duke of Grafton rose into greater authority, under the ministry of Lord Chatham, he taught his friend Wilkes to expect, from his good offices, all that either Wilkes himself or the public could demand in his favour. Wilkes returned, submitted himself to the laws of his country, had his outlawry removed, and was condemned to suffer punishment under the effect of his former prosecution. The Duke of Grafton could not fulfil what he had promised; yet, the vigilance and the energies of government, were somehow unaccountably relaxed in favour of the daring outlaw. The people were glad to see him brave the government and the parliament to the teeth. They espoused his cause with eagerness infinitely greater than they had before discovered towards him. It seemed as if the populace of London and Middlesex were the plebs of ancient Rome; and Wilkes a tribune. Even while he was an outlaw, they would chuse him, at the general election, to represent the county of Middlesex in parliament. The rival candidates, whom government favoured, had a hired mob to contend with the mob of Wilkes's partizans. In a fray, a man of the name of Clarke was killed by persons belonging to that which was called the hired mob of the court, Those persons were brought to trial. In the exasperation of the people against the court, M'Quirk was fiercely found guilty by the jury. The crown might have freely pardoned him, without publicly assigning any reason for this act of mercy. But administration was, at this time, so timid and feeble, in consequence of its former irregularities in the exercise of power, that even pardon to a condemned criminal might not be granted, without rendering an account to the people. By the advice of Lord Camden, at that time Lord Chancellor, witnesses were again examined concerning the immediate cause of Clarke's death. It was rendered probable, that the jury who found M'Quirk guilty, might have hastily mistaken. M'Quirk was pardoned. The reasons for the pardon were made public; perhaps not more to justify the sovereign, than to throw out an insinuation of partiality in the jury. The clamour of the public was raised high against this act of mercy. JUNIUS marked their humour, and would not miss so fair an occasion of becoming the apologist of their prejudices, and of inflaming their passions, in order the more effectually to promote his own primary views. The contest between the ministry and the people of the metropolis was on this occasion the fiercer, because while the peo ple complained, on the one hand, that the government was disposed to support and strengthen itself by infractions of the law, and an ir regular regular exercise of the prerogative, the friends of government, on the other hand, alledged that juries were eager to acquit every person tried before them, however strong the evidence against him, if it were a public crime of which he was accused, and that crime some attempt to thwart and embarrass the executive power. In this Letter, JUNIUS introduces his animadversions on the pardon to M’Quirk, with accusing the Duke of Grafton of making his sovereign odious to the English nation; by exhibiting him, contrary to the design of the English constitution, as the author rather of acts of unpopular severity, than of such as could be alone adapted to conciliate the favour of the people; and by making the exercise even of the royal prerogative of mercy to individuals, appear to be sullen cruelty to the public at large. These insinuations were intended, both to reach the sovereign himself, in the estimation of the public, and to excite, if the Letter should fall into their hands, mutual suspicions in the minds of the king and of his minister. JUNIUS next enters directly upon the subject which his Letter was meant to discuss. He suggests, that government had employed every possible exertion of undue influence to save M'Quirk at his trial. He affirms that, when his guilt had appeared too flagrant and too notorious, to be by any arts saved from the justice of an English jury— then, then, with singular wickedness and folly, had the minister advised his sovereign to insult that jury, and encourage sediticus riots, by pardoning, upon frivolous pretexts, a criminal whose profligacy mercy could not be expected to reclaim, and whose punishment would have been a highly salutary example, to command due respect for the king's peace, and due reverence for the laws. He insinuates, as was then very industriously alledged by the demagogues and agitators of the opposition, that the ministers were not unwilling to encourage riots, and every species of tumultuous licence, in order to procure a pretence for superseding the legal functions of the civil magistracy, by the ordinary employment of a military force to keep the peace. He then examines the reasons alledged for the pardon of M'Quirk, and pronounces them absurdly frivolous. In the close of his Letter, he makes an eloquent transition to the case of Mr. Wilkes, by which the minds of the public were then deeply interested, and violently agitated. He strives to make the unpopular pardon to M'Quirk still more odious, by contrasting it with the ob stinacy stinacy with which government denied the only pardon which the people were greatly solicitous to obtain. He concludes with a fierce accusation of the Duke's private morals and public conduct. MY LORD, BEFORE 18. March, 1769. 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 exertion 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 advan→ tageous to the King and his subjects; for, while it preserved that suspicious attention, with which the people ought always to examine the conduct of the ministers, it tended at the same time rather to increase than diminish their attachment to the person Every ungracious or severe exertion, &c.] JUNIUS has 'here quoted Montesquieu, as if Montesquieu were a suitable authority for an Englishman to cite for the principles of the British Constitution. But his assertion is, nevertheless, correct. It is one of the leading, practical principles of our constitution, to exhibit the king directly to his subjects, only as the author of acts of benevolence and mercy. In the old government of France it was otherwise. When the sovereign held beds of justice to compel the parliament of Paris to register obnoxious edicts, he was shewn immediately to his subjects in the character of an oppressor. * Les rois ne se sont reservé que les graces. Ils renvoient les condamnations vers leurs officiers. Montesquieu, of |