LETTER XLV. TO THE PRINTER OF THE PUBLIC ADVERTISER. SIR, 1 May, 1771. THEY, who object to detached parts of JUNIUS's last letter, either do not mean him fairly, or have not considered the general scope and course of his argument.-There are degrees in all the private vices.-Why not in public prostitution?-The influence of the crown naturally makes a septennial parliament dependent. -Does it follow that every House of Commons will plunge at once into the lowest depths of prostitution?-JUNIUS supposes that the present House of Commons, in going such enormous lengths, have been imprudent to themselves, as well as wicked to the public;-that their example is not within the reach of emulation ;—and judge of their own privileges without appeal:-they may take offence at the most innocent action, and imprison the person who offends them, during their arbitrary will and pleasure. The party has no remedy;-he cannot appeal from their ju risdiction; and if he questions the privilege, which he is supposed to have violated, it becomes an aggravation of his offence. Surely this doctrine is not to be found in Magna Charta. If it be admitted without limitation, I affirm that there is neither law nor liberty in this kingdom. We are the slaves of the House of Commons, and, through them, we are the slaves of the King and his ministers. ANONYMOUS. that, in the first session after the next election, some popular measures may probably be adopted. He does not expect that a dissolution of parliament will destroy corruption, but that at least it will be a check and terror to their successors, who will have seen that, in flagrant cases, their constituents can and will interpose with effect.— After all, Sir, will you not endeavour to remove or alleviate the most dangerous symptoms, because you cannot eradicate the disease? Will you not punish treason or parricide, because the sight of a gibbet does not prevent highway robberies? When the main argument of JUNIUS is admitted to be unanswerable, I think it would become the minor critic, who hunts for blemishes, to be a little more distrustful of his own sagacity. The other objection is hardly worth When JUNIUS observes that kings an answer. are ready enough to follow such advice, he does not mean to insinuate that, if the advice of parliament were good, the King would be so ready to follow it. PHILO JUNIUS. LETTER XLVI. TO THE PRINTER OF THE PUBLIC ADVERTISER. SIR, 22 May, 1771. VERY early in the debate upon the decision of the Middlesex election, it was well observed by JUNIUS, that the House of Commons had not only exceeded their boasted precedent of the expulsion and subsequent incapacitation of Mr. Walpole, but that they had not even adhered to it strictly as far as it went. After convicting Mr. Dyson of giving a false quotation from the journals*, and having explained the purpose, which that contemptible fraud was intended to answer, he proceeds to state the vote itself, by which Mr. Walpole's supposed incapacity was declared,-viz. " Resolved, That Robert Walpole, Esq. having been this session of parliament committed a prisoner to the Tower, and expelled this house for a high breach of trust in the execution of his office, and notorious corruption when secretary at war, was, and is incapable of being elected a member to serve in this present parliament:"-and then observes that, from the terms of the vote, we have no right to annex the incapacitation to the expulsion only, for that, as the proposition stands, it must * See JUNIUS, Letter xx. vol. i. p. 216, note. EDIT. VOL. II. arise equally from the expulsion and the commitment to the Tower. I believe, Sir, no man, who knows any thing of dialectics, or who understands English, will dispute the truth and fairness of this construction. But JUNIUS has a great authority to support him, which, to speak with the Duke of Grafton, I accidentally met with this morning in the course of my reading. It contains an admonition, which cannot be repeated too often. Lord Somers, in his excellent tract upon the rights of the people, after reciting the vote of the convention, of the 28th of January, 1689, viz.-" That King James the second, having endeavoured to subvert the constitution of this kingdom by breaking the original contract between King and people; and by the advice of jesuits and other wicked persons having violated the fundamental laws, and having withdrawn himself out of this kingdom, hath abdicated the government, &c."- -makes this observation upon it. The word abdicated relates to all the clauses aforegoing, as well as to his deserting the kingdom, or else they would have been wholly in vain." And that there might be no pretence for confining the abdication merely to the withdrawing, Lord Somers farther observes, That King James, by refusing to govern us according to that law, by which he held the crown, did implicitly renounce his title to it. If JUNIUS's construction of the vote against Mr. Walpole be now admitted, (and indeed I cannot comprehend how it can honestly be disputed) the advocates of the House of Commons must either give up their precedent entirely, or be reduced to the necessity of maintaining one of the grossest absurdities imaginable, viz. "That a commitment to the Tower is a constituent part of, and contributes half at least to the incapacitation of the person who suffers it." I need not make you any excuse for endeavouring to keep alive the attention of the public to the decision of the Middlesex election. The more I consider it, the more I am convinced that, as a fact, it is indeed highly injurious to the rights of the people; but that, as a precedent, it is one of the most dangerous that ever was established against those who are to come after us*. * Mr. Wilkes having been again returned as one of the -members for the county of Middlesex, in the parliaments of -1774 and 1780, made various fruitless efforts to get the decision of the House of Commons on this most interesting controversy, erased from their journals, which he at length effected, on the dissolution of the administration of which Lord North had been at the head, from the time of the resignation of the Duke of Grafton, in the year 1770. This occurred May 3, 1782. Mr. Wilkes prefaced his motion in the following address to the house. MR. SPEAKER, "I THINK myself peculiarly happy at the present mo |