Page:Letters of Junius, volume 1 (Woodfall, 1772).djvu/148

 other honest servants, you determined to involve the best of masters in the same difficulties with yourself. We owe it to your Grace's well-directed labours, that your Sovereign has been persuaded to doubt of the affections of his subjects, and the people to suspect the virtues of their Sovereign, at a time when both were unquestionable. You have degraded the Royal dignity into a base and dishonourable competition with Mr. Wilkes, nor had you abilities to carry even the last contemptible triumph over a private man, without the grossest violation of the fundamental laws of the constitution and rights of the people. But these are rights, my Lord, which you can no more annihilate, than you can the soil to which they are annexed. The question no longer turns upon points of national honour and security abroad, or on the degrees of expedience and propriety of measures at home. It was not inconsistent that you should abandon the cause of liberty in another country, which you had persecuted in your own: and in the common arts of domestic corruption, we miss no part of Sir Robert Walpole's system except his abilities. In this humble, imitative line, you might long have proceeded, safe and contemptible. You