tion, to the spirit of which we owe the relation which subsists between your Majesty and the subjects of these realms, and to subvert those sacred laws which our ancestors have sealed with their blood.

"Your ministers, from corrupt principles, and in violation of every duty, have, by various enumerated means, invaded our invaluable and unalienable right of trial by jury.

cr

They have, with impunity, issued general warrants, and violently seized persons and private papers.

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They have rendered the laws non-effective to our security, by evading the Habeas Corpus.

66

They have caused punishments, and even perpetual imprisonment to be inflicted without trial, conviction, or sentence.

.

They have brought into disrepute the civil magistracy, by the appointment of persons who are, in many respects, unqualified for that important trust, and have thereby purposely furnished a pretence for calling in the aid of a military power. "They avow, and endeavour to establish a maxim, absolutely inconsistent with our constitution, that an occasion for effectually employing a military force always presents itself when the civil power is trifled with or insulted;' and by a fatal and false application of this maxim, they have wantonly and wickedly sacrificed the lives of many of your Majesty's innocent subjects, and have prostituted your Majesty's sacred name and authority, to justify, applaud, and recommend their own illegal and bloody actions.

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They have screened more than one murderer from punishment, and in its place have unnaturally substituted reward.

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'They have established numberless unconstitutional regulations and taxations in our colonies. They have caused a revenue to be raised in some of them by prerogative. They have appointed civil law judges to try revenue causes, and to be paid from out of the condemnation money. ·

"After having insulted and defeated the law on different occasions, and by different contrivances, both at home and abroad,

abroad, they have at length completed their design, by violently wresting from the people the last sacred right we had left, the right of election; by the unprecedented seating of a candidate notoriously set up and chosen only by themselves. They have thereby taken from your subjects all hopes of par liamentary redress, and have left us no resource, under God, but in your Majesty.

"All this they have been able to effect by corruption; by -a scandalous misapplication and embezzlement of the public treasure, and a shameful prostitution of public honours and employments; procuring deficiencies of the civil list to be made good without examination; and, instead of punishing, conferring honours on a pay-master, the public defaulter of unaccounted millions.

"From an unfeigned sense of the duty we owe to your Majesty, and to our country, we have ventured thus humbly to lay before the throne these great and important truths, which it has been the business of your ministers to conceal. We most earnestly beseech your Majesty to grant us redress. It is for the purpose of redress alone, and for such occasions as the present, that those great and extensive powers are intrusted to the crown, by the wisdom of that constitution, which your Majesty's illustrious family was chosen to defend, and which, we trust in God, it will for ever continue to support."

Lord Holland suspecting himself to be implicated in the last paragraph but one of the above petition, addressed the following letter to the Lord Mayor upon this subject :

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE LORD MAYOR.

"My Lord,

"In a petition presented by your Lordship it is mentioned as a grievance, Instead of punishing, conferring honours on a pay-master, the public defaulter of unaccounted millions. I am told that I am the pay-master here censured: may I beg to know of your Lordship if it is so? If it is, I am

VOL. I.

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sure

sure Mr. Beckford must have been against it, because he knows and could have shewn your Lordship in writing, the utter falsehood of what is there insinuated.

"I have not the honour to know your Lordship, so I cannot tell what you may have heard to induce you to carry to our Sovereign a complaint of so atrocious a nature.

"Your Lordship, by your speech made to the King at delivering the petition, has adopted the contents of it; and I do not know of whom to enquire but of your Lordship con cerning this injury done to an innocent man, who am by this means (if I am the person meant) hung out as an object of public hatred and resentment.

"You have too much honour and justice not to tell me whether I am the person meant, and if I am, the grounds upon which I am thus charged, that I may vindicate myself, which truth will enable me to do to the conviction of the bitterest enemy; and therefore I may boldly say, to your Lordship's entire satisfaction, whom I certainly have never offended, "I am, with the greatest respect,

To this letter the Lord Mayor returned the following an

swer

"The Lord Mayor presents his compliments to lord. Holland, and in answer to the honour of his Lordship's letter delivered to him by Mr. Selwyn, he begs leave to say that he had no concern in drawing up the petition from the Livery of London to his Majesty; that he looks on himself only as the carrier, together with other gentlemen charged by the Livery with the delivery of it; that he does not, nor ever did, hold himself accountable for the contents of it, and is à stranger to the nature of the supposed charge against his Lordship.

"Mansion House, July 10, 1769.”

Mr

Mr. Beckford, seeing his name implicated in this correspondence, wrote from the country the following letter to a friend, who was a Liveryman of the city :

"Dear Sir,

"Fonthill, July 15, 1769. "I am as much surprised as you seem to be, at seeing my name, and papers in my possession, appealed to by a noble Lord.-You and my friends in the city think it incumbent on me to vindicate (as they are pleased to express themselves) my honour and character, which is called in question. The only proper satisfaction in my power to give you and my other friends, is to relate plain matters of fact, to the best of my recollection.

"

"In the last session of Parliament, on a question of revenue (as far as my memory serves) I did declare to the House that the public revenue had been squandered away, and that the money of the nation had not been regularly audited and accounted for.

"That in the department of the Pay-office I had been informed there were upwards of forty millions not properly accounted for; that the officers of the King's Exchequer were bound in duty to see justice done to the public; that process had issued out of the Court of Exchequer, and that all proceedings for a certain time had been suspended by the King's sign manual. I then did declare, that it was an high offence for any minister to advise the King to stop the course of public justice, without assigning a very good reason for such his advice. I desired the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the Lords of the Treasury, who sat opposite to me, to set me right if my information was not well-founded; but not a single word was uttered in answer by any of the gentlemen in administration,

"After some days had elapsed, I met my friend Mr. Woodhouse in Westminster Hall, he told me I had been misinformed as to what I had mentioned in the House of Commons, and that, if I would give him leave, he would send me a paper from a noble Lord, which would convince me of my mistake. The paper

N 2

paper alluded to is in London, I therefore cannot speak of the contents with accuracy and precision; but this I recollect, that the perusal of the paper did not convince me that all I had heard was false. It was a private paper, and I do not recollect having shewn it to more than a single person. I have no doubt Mr. Woodhouse has a copy of the paper by him, and I hope he will submit the contents to the judgment of the public, in vindication of an INNOCENT man.

"I am, dear Sir,

"Your ever faithful and affectionate humble servant,

" WILLIAM BECKFORD."

It was in consequence of this letter that lord Holland was induced to publish the account above referred to by JUNIUS, and again by Mr. Beckford. Long as it is, it ought not to be omitted in this place.

FOR THE PUBLIC ADVERTISER.

Letter to H. S. Woodfall.

"MR. WOODFALL,

"Kingsgate, July 20, 1769. “Lord Holland seeing in your paper a Letter from Mr. Beckford to a Liveryman, of July 15, 1769, and Mr. Woodhouse being at Spa, in Germany, sends you an authentic copy of the paper which he sent by Mr. Woodhouse to Mr. Beckford. He hopes the perusal of it will convince the reader that all is false that can impute any crime to lord Holland.

"The reader will see that some of lord Holland's accounts were then before the auditor; and there are two years' accounts since lodged there.

"He will see that lord Holland's accounts (voluminous and difficult beyond example) have not been kept back from inclination, but necessity; and not longer than those of his prede

cessors.

"He will see (and is desired to observe particularly) that savings, so far from remaining all in lord Holland's hands, had been given in and voted in aid of the public service, to the amount of £910,541. And £43,533. 19s. 7d. (upon some

regimental