example of this sort was never so necessary as at present; and certainly you must have known that the lot could not have fallen upon a more guilty object. What system of government is this? You are perpetually complaining of the riotous disposition of the lower class of people, yet when the laws have given you the means of making an example, in every sense unexceptionable, and by far the most likely to awe the multitude, you pardon the offence, and are not ashamed to give the sanction of government to the riots you complain of, and even to future murders. You are partial perhaps to the military mode of execution, and had rather see a score of these wretches butchered by the guards, than one of them suffer death by regular course of law*. How does it happen, my Lord, that, in your hands, even the mercy of the prerogative is cruelty and oppression to the subject?

The measure it seems was so extraordinary, that you thought it necessary to give some reasons for it to the public. Let them be fairly examined.

1. You say that Messrs. Bromfield and Starling were not examined at Mac Quirk's trial. I will tell your Grace why they were not. They must have been examined upon oath; and it was foreseen, that their evidence would either not benefit, or might be prejudicial to the prisoner. Otherwise, is it conceivable that his counsel should neglect to call in such material evidence?

You say that Mr. Foot did not see the deceased until after his death. A surgeon, my Lord, must know very little of his profession, if, upon examining a wound, or a contusion, he cannot determine whether it was mortal or not. - While the party is alive, a surgeon will be cautious of pronouncing; whereas, by the death of the patient, he is enabled to consider both cause and effect in one view, and to speak with a certainty confirmed by experience.

Yet we are to thank your Grace for the establishment of a new tribunal. Your inquisitio post mortem is unknown to the laws of England, and does honour to your invention*. The only material objection to it is, that if Mr. Foot's evidence was insufficient, because he did not examine the wound till after the death of the party, much less can a negative opinion, given by gentlemen who never saw the body of Mr.

Clarke, either before or after his decease, authorize you to supersede the verdict of a jury, and the sentence of the law.

Now, my Lord, let me ask you, Has it never occurred to your Grace, while you were withdrawing this desperate wretch from that justice which the laws had awarded, and which the whole people of England demanded against him, that there is another man, who is the favourite of his country, whose pardon would have been accepted with gratitude, whose pardon would have healed all our divisions*? Have you quite forgotten that this man was once your Grace's friend? Or is it to murderers only that you will extend the mercy of the crown?

These are questions you will not answer, nor is it necessary. The character of your private life, and the uniform tenour of your public conduct, is an answer to them all..

JUNIUS.

A

• John Wilkes, formerly, and before the duke of Grafton had abandoned the party of Lord Chatham, and had formed a party for himself, was one of his Grace's most confidential friends. He was at this time confined in the King's Bench prison, having surrendered himself to the jurisdiction of the court of this name, by which the sentence of outlawry had been pronounced against him. The immediate cause of the ministerial persecution of Wilkes, was the zeal with which he had opposed the existing cabinet, and especially the odium and disgrace in which the ministry had involved themselves by issuing a general warrant to seize all the papers and persons of whomsoever they suspected to be concerned in writing the forty-fifth number of the famous political and periodical paper called the North Briton, a joint publication of John Wilkes, Charles Churchill, and Lord Temple. The question of general warrants was hereby necessarily brought before the public. The popular resentment was roused against the abettors of such a measure to the highest point of irascibility; and Wilkes, upon the next general election that ensued, was chosen member of parliament for the county of Middlesex, notwithstanding his outlawry, as a proof of the utter contempt in which the ministry were at this time held by the nation, rather than out of any personal regard for Wilkes himself, whose own misconduct must otherwise have been the ruin of him.EDIT.

LETTER IX.

TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF GRAFTON.

10 April, 1769. I HAVE so good an opinion of your Grace's discernment, that when the author of the vindication of your conduct assures us, that he writes from his own mere motion, without the least authority from your Grace*, I should be ready enough to believe him, but for one fatal mark, which seems to be fixed upon every measure, in which either your personal or your political character is concerned.-Your first attempt to support Sir William Proctor ended in the election of Mr. Wilkes; the second ensured success to Mr. Glynn. 'The extraordinary step you took to make Sir James Lowther lord paramount of Cumberland, has ruined his interest in that county for evert. The House List of Directors was cursed with the concurrence of government; and even the miserable Dingley could not escape the misfortune of your Grace's protections. With this uniforın experience before us, we are authorized to suspect, that when a pretended vindication of your principles and conduct in reality contains the bitterest reflections upon both, it could not have been written without your immediate direction and assistance. The author indeed calls God to witness for him, with all the sincerity, and in the very terms of an Irish evidence, to the best of his knowledge and belief. My Lord, you should not encourage these appeals to heaven. The pious Prince, from whom you are supposed to descend, made such frequent use of them in his public declarations, that at last the people also found it necessary to appeal to heaven in their turn. Your administration has driven us into circumstances of equal distress;-beware at least how you remind us of the remedy.

You have already much to answer for. You have provoked this unhappy gentleman to play the fool once more in public life, in spite of his years and infirmities, and to shew us, that, as you yourself are a singular instance of youth without spirit, the man who defends you is a no less remarkable example of age without the benefit of experience. To follow such a writer minutely would, like his own periods, be a labour without end. The subject too has been already discussed, and is sufficiently understood. I cannot help observing, however, that, when the pardon of Mac Quirk was the principal charge against you, it would have been but a decent compliment to your Grace's understanding, to have defended you upon your own principles. What credit does a man deserve, who tells us plainly, that the facts set forth in the King's proclamation were not the true motives on which the pardon was granted, and that he wishes that those chirurgical reports, which first gave occasion to certain doubts in the royal breast, had not been laid before his Majesty. You see, my Lord, that even your friends cannot defend your actions, without changing your principles, nor justify a deliberate measure of government, without contradicting the main assertion on which it was founded.

The conviction of Mac Quirk had reduced you to a dilemma, in which it was hardly possible for you to reconcile your political interest with your duty. You were obliged either to abandon an active useful partisan, or to protect a felon from public justice. With your usual spirit, you preferred your interest to every other consideration; and with your usual judgment, you founded your determination upon the only motives, which should not have been given to the public.