Page:Letters of Junius, volume 2 (Woodfall, 1772).djvu/204

194 you imagine that the whole body of the dissenters, that the whole Whig-interest of London, would attend at the levee, and submit to the directions of a notorious Jacobite? Was there no Whig magistrate in the city, to whom the servants of George the Third could entrust the management of a business so very interesting to their Master as the election of sheriffs? Is there no room at St. James's but for Scotchmen and Jacobites? My Lord, I do not mean to question the sincerity of Mr. Harley's attachment to his Majesty's government. Since the commencement of the present reign, I have seen still greater contradictions reconciled. The principles of these worthy Jacobites are not so absurd as they have been represented. Their ideas of divine right are not so much annexed to the person or family, as to the political character of the Sovereign. Had there ever been an honest man among the Stuarts, his Majesty's present friends would have been Whigs upon principle. But the conversion of the best of Princes has removed their scruples. They have forgiven him the sins of his Hanoverian ancestors, and acknowledged the hand of Providence in the descent of the Crown upon the head of a true Stuart.