Page:Letters of Junius, volume 2 (Woodfall, 1772).djvu/232

222 he, after consuming the whole of his own fortune and that of his wife, and incurring a debt of twenty thousand pounds, merely by his own private extravagance, without a single service or exertion all this time for the public, whilst his estate remained; should he, at length, being undone, commence patriot; have the good fortune to be illegally persecuted, and, in consideration of that illegality, be espoused by a few gentlemen of the purest public principles: should his debts, though none of them were contracted for the public, and all his other encumbrances, be discharged; should he be offered 600l. or 1000l. a year to make him independent for the future; and should he, after all, instead of gratitude for these services, insolently forbid his benefactors to bestow their own money upon any other object but himself, and revile them for setting any bounds to their supplies; Junius (who, any more than Lord Chatham, never contributed one farthing to these enormous expenses) will tell them, that if they think of converting the supplies of Mr. Wilkes's private extravagance to the support of public measures,————they are as great fools as my grandmother; and that Mr.