have called this dishonourable transaction by its true name; a job to accommodate two persons, by particular interest and management at the castle. What sense must government have had of your services, when the rewards they have given you are only a disgrace to you! And now, Sir William, I shall take my leave of you for ever. Motives very different from any apprehension of your resentment, make it impossible you should ever know me. In truth, you have some reason to hold yourself indebted to me. From the lessons I have given you, you may collect a profitable instruction for your future life. They will either teach you so to regulate your conduct, as to be able to set the most malicious inquiries at defiance; or, if that be a lost hope, they will teach you prudence enough not to attract the public attention to a character, which will only pass without censure, when it passes without observation. JUNIUS. LETTER VIII. TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF GRAFTON. MY LORD, 18 March, 1769. BEFORE you were placed at the head of affairs, it had been a maxim of the English government, not unwillingly directly or indirectly, any present or gratification, or any circumstance of emolument whatsoever to the amount of five shillings, during the whole course of the expe‹lition, or afterwards, my legal prize-money excepted. The Spaniards know that I refused the sum of fifty thousand pounds offered me by the archbishop, to mitigate the terms of the ransom, and to reduce it to half a million, instead of a whole one: so that had I been disposed to have basely sold the partners of my victory, avarice herself could not have wished for a richer opportunity. The many base insinuations, that have been of late thrown out to my disadvantage in the public papers, oblige me to have recourse to the same channel for my vindication; and flatter myself that the public will be candid enough not to impute it to arrogance, vanity, or the impertinence of egotism; and hope that as much credit will be given to the assertions of a man, who is ready to seal his testimony with his blood, as to a writer, who when repeatedly called upon to avow himself, and personally maintain his accusation, still skulks in the dark, or in the mean subterfuge of a mask. W. D. 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 advantageous to the King and to his subjects; for while it preserved that suspicious attention, with which the people ought always to examine the conduct of ministers, it tended at the same time rather to increase than to diminish their attachment to the person of their Sovereign. If there be not a fatality attending every measure you are concerned in, by what treachery, or by what excess of folly has it happened, that those ungracious acts, which have distinguished your administration, and which I doubt not were entirely your own, should carry with them a strong appearance of personal interest, and even of personal enmity in a quarter, where no such interest or enmity can be supposed to exist, without the highest injustice and the highest dishonour? On the other hand, by what judicious management have you contrived it, that the only act of mercy, to which you ever advised your Sovereign, far from adding to the lustre of a character, truly gracious and benevolent, should be received with universal disapprobation and disgust? I shall consider it as a ministerial measure, because it is an odious one, and as your measure, my Lord Duke, because you are the minister. As long as the trial of this chairman was dependingt, it * Les rois ne se sont reservé que les graces. Ils renvoient les condemnations vers leurs officiers. Montesquieu. The contest for the Middlesex election, in which Wilkes, though an outlaw, was four times returned through the favour of the populace, was conducted on both sides with the utmost violence and outrage. The court as well as the popular party had its committees and its hired mobs. Edward M'Quirk was one of the persons employed in the latter capacity, and how resolutely he fulfilled his office in heading one of the court mobs may be collected from his having been chiefly concerned in a fray, in which a man of the name of Clarke, belonging to the opposite mob, was killed. M'Quirk was committed to prison, and, on his trial the jury found him guilty of murder, and he was of course condemned to be executed. By the advice of the minister, however, his majesty interposed with his royal grace, and M'Quirk was pardoned. EDIT. was natural enough that government should give him every possible encouragement and support. The honourable service for which he was hired, and the spirit with which he performed it, made common cause between your Grace and him. The minister, who by secret corruption invades the freedom of elections, and the ruffian, who by open violence destroys that freedom, are embarked in the same bottom.. They have the same interests, and mutually feel for each other. To do justice to your Grace's humanity, you felt for Mac Quirk as you ought to do, and if you had been contented to assist him indirectly, without a notorious denial of justice, or openly insulting the sense of the nation, you might have satisfied every duty of political friendship, without committing the honour of your Sovereign, or hazarding the reputation of his government. But when this unhappy man had been solemnly tried, convicted and condemned;when it appeared that he had been frequently employed in the same services, and that no excuse for him could be drawn either from the innocence of his former life, or the simplicity of his character, was it not hazarding too much to interpose the strength of the prerogative between this felon and the justice of his country*? You ought to have known that an • Whitehall, March 11, 1769. His Majesty has been graciously pleased to extend his royal mercy to Edward M'Quirk, found guilty of the murder of George Clarke, as appears by his royal warrant to the tenor following. GEORGE R. WHEREAS a doubt had arisen in Our Royal breast concerning the evidence of the death of George Clarke, from the representations of William Bloomfield, Esq. surgeon, and Solomon Starling, apothecary; both of whom, as has been represented to Us, attended the deceased before his death, and expressed their opinions that he did not die of the blow he received at Brentford: And whereas it appears to Us, that neither of the said persons were produced as witnesses upon the trial, though the said Solomon Starling had been examined before the coroner, and the only person called to prove that the death of the said George Clarke was occasioned by the said blow, was John Foot, surgeon, who never saw the deceased till after his death; We thought fit thereupon to refer the said representations, together with the report of the Recorder of Our city of London, of the evidence given by Richard and William Beale, and the said John Foot, on the trial of Edward Quirk, otherwise called Edward Kirk, otherwise called Edward M'Quirk, for the murder of the said Clarke, to the master, wardens, 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 ha 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? wardens, and the rest of the court of examiners of the Surgeons company, commanding them likewise to take such further examination of the said persons so representing, and of said John Foot, as they might think necessary, together with the premises above mentioned, to form and report to Us their opinion, "Whether it did or did not appear to them, that the said George Clarke died in consequence of the blow he received in the riot at Brentford on the 8th of December last." And the said court of examiners of the Surgeons company having thereupon reported to Us their opinion, "That it did not appear to them that he did;" We have thought proper to extend Our royal mercy to him the said Edward Quirk, otherwise Edward Kirk, otherwise called Edward M'Quirk, and to grant him Our free pardon for the murder of the said George Clarke, of which he has been found guilty: Our will and pleasure therefore is, That he the said Edward Quirk, otherwise called Edward Kirk, otherwise called Edward M‘Quirk, be inserted, for the said murder, in our first and next general pardon that shall come out for the poor convicts of Newgate, without any condition whatsoever; and that in the mean time you take bail for his appearance, in order to plead Our said pardon. And for so doing this shall be your warrant. Given at Our court at St. James's the 10th day of March, 1769, in the ninth year of Our reign. By his Majesty's command, To Our trusty and well beloved James Eyre, ROCHFORD. * See this subject farther touched upon in Miscellaneous Letters, No. XXIV. EDIT. 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. • This sentence in a note to one of the editions of the Letters of JUNIUS is said to have no correct meaning. "JUNIUS," says the commentator, 66 thought that he had hit upon a forcible and quaintly allusive expression, hastily used it, and blundered into nonsense in the use." The reader however shall now determine whether it is the author or the commentator who has blundered into nonsense. The expression is, in fact, perfectly correct, though liable to be misunderstood without some attention. Every coroner's inquest, indeed, except in the cases of ship-wreck and treasure-trove, is, when exercised judicially, an inquisitio post mortem; but it can only legally take place super visum corporis, "on the sight of the corpse or dead body;" on the spot where the death was produced; and by a jury summoned from the neighbourhood. In the instance before us none of these constitutional requisites, were attended to; and JUNIUS might hence remark with the strictest accuracy, as well as the keenest irony, Your inquisitio post mortem is unknown to the laws of England. EDIT. |