Page:Letters of Junius, volume 2 (Woodfall, 1772).djvu/72

62 government, it has been the fashion to answer us, though not very fairly, with an appeal to the private virtues of your Sovereign: "Has he not, to relieve the people, surrendered a considerable part of his revenue? Has he not made the judges independent, by fixing them in their places for life?"—My Lord, we acknowledge the gracious principle which gave birth to these concessions, and have nothing to regret, but that it has never been adhered to. At the end of seven years, we are loaded with a debt of above five hundred thousand pounds upon the civil list; and now we see the Chancellor of Great Britain tyrannically forced out of his office, not for want of abilities, not for want of integrity, or of attention to his duty, but for delivering his honest opinion in parliament, upon the greatest constitutional question that has arisen since the revolution.—We care not to whose private virtues you appeal. The theory of such a government is falsehood and mockery;—the practice is oppression. You have laboured then (though I confess to no purpose) to rob your master of the only plausible answer, that ever was given in defence of his government,—of the opinion, which the people had conceived of his personal honour