Page:Thoughts on civil liberty, on licentiousness and faction.djvu/140

 from the Insults of Those whom she had never injured:—

If any other Branch of a royal Family should be basely traduced, by the grossest and most audacious Calumnies, studiously contrived to inflame an ignorant and unbridled Populace:—

If the Servants of the Crown, and Members of the Legislature, who had legally exerted themselves in Defence of their injured Sovereign, should in their private Character be impudently vilify'd, misrepresented, and abused; and even their unoffending Families traduced with study'd and unexampled Virulence:—

If neither Age nor Virtue should be a Security against the Arrows of public Calumny:—If a of the most distinguished Worth in private Life, a known and zealous Friend of public Liberty, one of the Ornaments of his Age and Country, should be overwhelmed by a Load of the most unprovoked and malicious Slander; merely because he had dared to