Page:Letters of Junius, volume 2 (Woodfall, 1772).djvu/104

94 constitutional expedients, which would have given a security against any similar attempts for the future. The general proposition, in which the whole country had an interest, might have been reduced to a particular fact, in which Mr. Wilkes and Mr. Luttrell would alone have been concerned. The house of lords might interpose;—the king might dissolve the parliament;—or if every other resource failed, there still lay a grand constitutional writ of error, in behalf of the people, from the decision of one court to the wisdom of the whole legislature. Every one of these remedies has been successively attempted. The people performed their part with dignity, spirit, and perseverance. For many months his Majesty heard nothing from his people but the language of complaint and resentment; unhappily for this country, it was the daily triumph of his courtiers that he heard it with an indifference approaching contempt.

house of commons having assumed a power unknown to the constitution, were determined not merely to support it in the single instance in question, but to maintain the doctrine in its utmost extent, and to