than his enemies. In mercy to him, let us drop the subject. For my own part, I willingly leave it to the public to determine whether your vindication of your friend has been as able and judicious, as it was certainly well intended; and you, I think, may be satisfied with the warm acknowledgments he already owes you for making him the principal figure in a piece, in which, but for your amicable assistance, he might have passed without particular notice or distinction.

In justice to your friends, let your future labours be confined to the care of your own reputation. Your declaration, that you are happy in seeing young noblemen come among us, is liable to two objections. With respect to Lord Percy, it means nothing, for he was already in the army. He was aidde-camp to the King, and had the rank of colonel. A regiment therefore could not make him a more military man, though it made him richer, and probably at the expence of some brave, deserving, friendless officer. The other concerns yourself. After selling the companions of your victory in one instance, and after selling your profession in the other, by what authority do you presume to call yourself a soldier? The plain evidence of facts is superior to all declarations. Before you were appointed to the 16th regiment, your complaints were a distress to government;-from that moment you were silent. The conclusion is inevitable. You insinuate to us that your ill state of health obliged you to quit the service. The retirement necessary to repair a broken constitution would have been as good a reason for not accepting, as for resigning the command of a regiment. There is certainly an error of the press, or an affected obscurity in that paragraph, where you speak of your bargain with colonel Gisborne*. Instead of attempting to answer what I really do not understand, permit me to explain to the public what I really know. In exchange for your regiment, you accepted of a colonel's half-pay (at least 220l. a year) and an annuity of 2001. for your own and lady Draper's life jointly. And is this the losing bargain, which you would represent to us, as if you had given up an income of 800l. a year for 380%? Was it decent, was it honourable, in a man who pretends to love the army, and calls himself a soldier, to make a traffic of the royal favour, and turn the highest honour of an active profession into a sordid provision for himself and his family? It were unworthy of me to press you farther. The contempt with which the whole army heard of the manner of your retreat, assures me that as your conduct was not justified by precedent, it will never be thought an example for imitation.

The last and most important question remains. When you receive your half-pay, do you, or do you not, take a solemn oath, or sign a declaration upon honour, to the following effect? That you do not actually hold any place of profit, civil or military, under his Majesty. The charge which this question plainly conveys against you, is of so shocking a complexion, that I sincerely wish you may be able to answer it well, not merely for the colour of your reputation, but for your own inward peace of mind.

JUNIUS.

LETTER VI.

TO JUNIUS.

SIR,

27 February, 1769. I HAVE a very short answer for JUNIUS's important question: I do not either take an oath, or declare upon honour, that I have no place of profit, civil or military, when I receive the half-pay as an Irish colonel. My most gracious Sovereign gives it me as a pension; he was pleased to think I deserved it. The annuity of 2001. Irish, and the equivalent for the half-pay together, produce no more than 380/. per annum, clear of fees and perquisites of office. I receive 1671. from my government of Yarmouth. Total 5471. per annum. My conscience is much at ease in these particulars; my friends need not blush for me.

JUNIUS makes much and frequent use of interrogations:

they are arms that may be easily turned against himself. I could, by malicious interrogations, disturb the peace of the most virtuous man in the kingdom; I could take the decalogue, and say to one man, Did you never steal? To the next, Did you never commit murder? And to JUNIUS himself, who is putting my life and conduct to the rack, Did you never bear false witness against thy neighbour? JUNIUS must easily see, that unless he affirms the contrary in his real name, some people who may be as ignorant of him as I am, will be apt to suspect him of having deviated a little from the truth: therefore let JUNIus ask no more questions. You bite against a file: cease viper. W. D.

LETTER VII.

TO SIR WILLIAM DRAPER, KNIGHT OF THE BATH.

SIR,

3 March, 1769. An academical education has given you an unlimited command over the most beautiful figures of speech. Masks, hatchets, racks, and vipers dance through your letters in all the mazes of metaphorical confusion. These are the gloomy companions of a disturbed imagination; the melancholy madness of poetry, without the inspiration. I will not contend with you in point of composition. You are a scholar, Sir William, and, if I am truly informed, you write Latin with almost as much purity as English. Suffer me then, for I am a plain unlettered man, to continue that stile of interrogation, which suits my capacity, and to which, considering the readiness of your answers, you ought to have no objection. Even Mr. Bingley* promises to answer, if put to the Do you then really think that, if I were to ask a most virtuous man whether he ever committed theft, or murder, it would disturb his peace of mind? Such a question might perhaps discompose the gravity of his muscles, but I believe it would little affect the tranquillity of his conscience. Examine your own breast, Sir William, and you will discover, that reproaches and enquiries have no power to afflict either the man of unblemished integrity, or the abandoned profligate. It is the middle compound character which alone is vulnerable: the man, who, without firmness enough to avoid a dishonourable action, has feeling enough to be ashamed of it.

I thank you for your hint of the decalogue, and shall take an opportunity of applying it to some of your most virtuous friends in both houses of parliament.

You seem to have dropped the affair of your regiment; so let it rest. When you are appointed to another, I dare say you will not sell it either for a gross sum, or for an annuity upon lives.

I am truly glad (for really, Sir William, I am not your enemy, nor did I begin this contest with you*) that you have been able to clear yourself of a crime, though at the expense of the highest indiscretion. You say that your halfpay was given you by way of pension. I will not dwell upon the singularity of uniting in your own person two sorts of

embraced by the wisest of nations: such expedients have been made use of by our own, when the public confusion had arrived to some very dangerous and alarming crisis; and I believe it needs not the gift of prophecy to foretel that some such crisis is now approaching. Perhaps it will be more wise and praiseworthy to make such an act immediately, in order to prevent the possibility (not to say the probability) of an insurrection at home and in our dependencies abroad, than it will be to be obliged to have recourse to one after the mischief has been done, and the kingdom has groaned under all the miseries that avarice, ambition, hypocrisy, and madness, could inflict upon it. An act of grace, indemnity, and oblivion, was passed at the restoration of King Charles the second; but I will venture to say that had such an act been seasonably passed in the reign of his unhappy father, the civil war had been prevented, and no restoration had been necessary. It is too late to recal all the messengers and edicts of wrath. Cannot the money that is now wasted in endless and mutual prosecutions, and in stopping the mouth of one person, and opening that of another, be better employed in erecting a temple to Concord? Let Mr. Wilkes lay the first stone, and such a stone as I hope the builders will not refuse. May this parliament, to use Lord Clarendon's expression, be called "The healing parliament!" May our foul wounds be cleansed and then closed! The English have been as famous for good-nature as for valour: let it not be said that such qualities are degenerated into savage ferocity. If any of my friends in either house of legislature shall condescend to listen to and improve these hints, I shall think that I have not lived in vain.

WILLIAM DRAPER.

Sir William, in return, if he ever had any personal enmity against JuN1U3, appears to have relinquished it completely a short time after the contest, if we may judge from the following anecdote given by Mr. Campbell in his life of Hugh Boyd, p. 185.

"Some months after the Letters of JUNIUS were published collectively, Boyd met Sir William Draper at the tennis court, where their acquain. tance was originally formed in the year 1769, and where (being both great tennis players) they used often to meet; the conversation turning upon JUNIUS, Sir William observed, "That though JuNIUS had treated him with extreme severity, he now looked upon him as a very honest fellow; that he freely forgave him for the bitterness of his censures, and that there was no man with whom he would more gladly drink a bottle of old Burgundy." EDIT.

It has been said, and I believe truly, that it was signified to Sir William Draper, as the request of Lord Granby, that he should desist from writing in his Lordship's defence. Sir William Draper certainly drew JUNINS VOL. I.

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