Page:Letters of Junius, volume 1 (Woodfall, 1772).djvu/162

 author seems to consider the great proposition on which all his argument depends, viz. that Mr, Wilkes was under that known legal incapacity, of which Junius speaks as a point granted, his speech is, in no shape, an answer to Junius, for this is the very question in debate.

to G. A. I observe first, that if he did not admit Junius's state of the question, he should have shown the fallacy of it, or given us a more exact one;—secondly, that, considering the many hours and days, which the ministry and their advocates have wasted, in public debate, in compiling large quartos, and collecting innumerable precedents, expressly to prove that the late proceedings of the house of commons are warranted by the law, custom, and practice of parliament, it is rather an extraordinary supposition, to be made by one of their own party even for the sake of argument, that no such statute, no such custom of parliament, no such case in point can be produced. G. A. may however, make the supposition with safety. It contains nothing, but literally the fact, except that there is a case exactly in point, with a decision of the house, diametrically opposite to that