your friends, and in the accomplishment of every sanguine hope which the public might have conceived from the illustrious name of Russel.

THE eminence of your station gave you a commanding prospect of your duty. The road, which led to honour, was open to your view. You could not lose it by mistake, and you had no temptation to depart from it by design. Compare the natural dignity and importance of the highest peer of England; the noble independence which he might have maintained in parliament, and the real interest and respect which he might have acquired, not only in parliament, but through the whole kingdom: compare these glorious distinctions with the ambition of holding a share in government, the emoluments of a place, the sale of a borough, or the purchase of a corporation; and, though you may not regret the virtues which create respect, you may see with anguish how much real importance and authority you have lost. Consider the character of an independent, virtuous Duke of Bedford, imagine what he might be in this country, then reflect one moment upon what you are. If it be possible for me to withdraw my attention from the fact, I will tell you in theory what such a man might be.

Irony thus transiently introduced amid the serious tenor of the periods going immediately before, and immediately following, is in its effect incongruous, and inconsistent with the propriety of composition.

CONSCIOUS of his own weight and importance, his conduct in parliament would be directed by nothing but the constitutional duty of a peer. He would consider himself as a guardian of the laws. Willing to support the just measures of government, but determined to observe the conduct of the minister with suspicion, he would oppose the violence of faction with as much firmness, as the encroachments of prerogative. He would be as little capable of bargaining with the minister for places for himself, or his dependants, as of descending to mix himself in the intrigues of opposition. Whenever an important question called for his opinion in parliament, he would be heard, by the most profligate minister, with deference and respect. His authority would either sanctify or disgrace the measures of government.—The people would look up to him as their protector; and a virtuous prince would have one honest man in his dominions, in whose integrity and judgment he might safely confide. * If it should be the will of Providence to afflict him with a domestic misfor

The people would look up to him, &c.] It is impossible to deny that, in this and the foregoing paragraph, JUNIUS has, with very skilful discrimination, explained the true public duties of a British nobleman of the highest rank and fortune. Much observation of both public and private life, much knowledge of the rules of moral duty, and of general policy, with great native penetration, were necessary to enable the author to produce this admirable passage. Neither a raw young man, nor any mere book-worm, could have written it. It cannot be too much studied by men of rank.

* The Duke lately lost his only son, by a fall from his horse.

tune,

tune, he would submit to the stroke, with feeling, but not without dignity. He would consider the people as his children, and receive a generous, heartfelt consolation, in the sympathising tears and blessings of his country.

YOUR Grace may probably discover something more intelligible in the negative part of this illustrious character. The man I have described would never prostitute his dignity in parliament by an indecent violence, either in opposing or defending a minister. He would not, at one moment, rancorously persecute, at another basely cringe to, the favourite of his Sovereign. After outraging the royal dignity with peremptory conditions, little short of menace and hostility, he would never descend to the humility of soliciting an interview * with the favourite, and of offering to recover, at any price, the honour of his friendship. Though deceived perhaps in his youth, he would not, through the course of a long life, have invariably chosen his friends from among the most profligate of mankind. His own honour would have forbidden him

He would consider the people, &c.] The beauty of this sentiment almost atones for the indecency of the allusion to the domestic misfortune which the Duke had recently suffered.

The Marquis of Tavistock, son to the Duke of Bedford here addressed, was the father of the present Duke. His mother was the sister of the late Earl of Albemarle.

* At this interview, which passed at the house of the late Lord Eglintoun, Lord Bute told the Duke, that he was determined never to have any connection with a man who had so basely be: trayed him.

from

from mixing his private pleasures or conversation with jockeys, gamesters, blasphemers, gladiators, or buffoons. He would then have never felt, much less would he have submitted to, the dishonest necessity of engaging in the interest and intrigues of his dependants; of supplying their vices, or relieving their beggary, at the expence of his country. He would not have betrayed such ignorance, or. such contempt of the constitution, as openly to avow, in a court of justice, the purchase and sale of a borough. He would not have thought it consistent with his rank in the state, or even with his personal importance, to be the little tyrant of a little corporation †. He would never have been insulted with virtues, which he had laboured to extinguish; nor suffered the disgrace of a mortifying defeat, which has made him ridiculous and contemptible, even to the few by whom he was not detested. I reverence the afflictions of a good man, his sorrows are sacred. But how can we take part in the distresses of a man, whom we can neither love nor esteem; or feel for a calamity, of which he himself is insensible? Where was the fa

* In an answer in Chancery, in a suit against him to recover a large sum paid him by a person whom he had undertaken to return to parliament, for one of his Grace's boroughs, he was compelled to repay the money.

+ Of Bedford, where the tyrant was held in such contempt and detestation, that, in order to deliver themselves from him, they admitted a great number of strangers to the freedom. To make his defeat truly ridiculous, he tried his whole strength against Mr. Horne, and was beaten upon his own ground.

ther's

ther's heart, when he could look for, or find, an immediate consolation for the loss of an only son, in consultations and bargains for a place at court, and even in the misery of balloting at the India House!

ADMITTING, then, that you have mistaken or deserted those honourable principles, which ought to have directed your conduct; admitting that you have as little claim to private affection as to public esteem; let us see with what abilities, with what degree of judgment, you have carried your own system into execution. A great man, in the success, and even in the magnitude of his crimes, finds a rescue from contempt. Your Grace is every way unfortunate. Yet I will not look back to those ridiculous scenes, by which in your earlier days you thought it an honour to be distinguished *; the recorded stripes, the public infamy, your own sufferings, or Mr. Rigby's fortitude. These events

Your Grace is every way unfortunate.] JUNIUS is never content to make the objects of his satire odious, unless he can render them, at the same time, contemptible.

* Mr. Heston Humphrey, a country attorney, horsewhipped the Duke, with equal justice, severity, and perseverance, on the course at Litchfield; Rigby and Lord Trentham were also cudgelled in a most exemplary manner. This gave rise to the following story: "When the late King heard that Sir Edward Hawke had given the "French a drubbing, his Majesty, who had never received that kind "of chastisement, was pleased to ask Lord Chesterfield the mean"ing of the word.Sir, says Lord Chesterfield, the meaning of "the word-but here comes the Duke of Bedford, who is better able to explain it to your Majesty than I am.”

undoubtedly