Page:Letters of Junius, volume 1 (Woodfall, 1772).djvu/213

 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 or esteem; or feel for a calamity, of which he himself is insensible? Where was the father's heart, when he could look for, or find an immediate consolation for the loss