The International Library of Famous Literature (Volume 9); Selections From the World's Great Writers, Ancient, Mediaeval, and Modern, With Biographical and Explanatory Notes and With Introductions - Tapa blanda

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Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1898. Excerpt: ... LETTERS OF JUNIUS. (In the Public Advertiser, London.) To His Grace The Duice Of Grafton. July 8, 1769. My Lord, -- If nature had given you an understanding qualified to keep pace with the wishes and principles of your heart, she would have made you, perhaps, the most formidable minister that ever was employed under a limited monarch to accomplish the ruin of a free people. When neither the feelings of shame, the reproaches of conscience, nor the dread of punishment form any bar to the designs of a minister, the people would have too much reason to lament their condition if they did not find some resource in the weakness of his understanding. We owe it to the bounty of Providence that the completest depravity of the heart is sometimes strangely united with a confusion of the mind which counteracts the most favorite principles, and makes the same man treacherous without art, and a hypocrite without deceiving. The measures, for instance, in which your Grace's activity has been chiefly exerted, as they were adopted without skill, should have been conducted with more than common dexterity. But truly, my Lord, the execution has been as gross as the design. By one decisive step you have defeated all the arts of writing. You have fairly confounded the intrigues of opposition, and silenced the clamors of faction. A dark, ambiguous system might require and furnish the materials of ingenious illustration; and, in doubtful measures, the virulent exaggeration of party must be employed to rouse and engage the passions of the people. You have now brought the merits of your administration to an issue on which every Englishman of the narrowest capacity may determine for himself. It is not an alarm to the passions, but a calm appeal to the judgment of the people upon their own most essential interes...