draw him in as a party, and to countenance the desperate measures of his Ministers; a snare which it is to be hoped this House will break. Whoever can concur in offering such indignity to his Sovereign, is neither a good senator nor a good subject. He can have no worthy conception of the exalted character of a great prince, nor of the inestimable value of the liberty of a free people."

"Can any one read this speech," observes Mr. Coventry, "without being forcibly reminded of the strong, energetic, powerful language of Junius? Many of the sentences are almost verbatim. The same violent attack on the Ministers, the same voice in reference to the King, the same allusion to the freedom of election, the massacre in St. George's Fields, the expulsion of Mr. Wilkes, and finally, a fear lest the shattered remains of the constitution should fall a prey to the violence of the people, and they in the end resolve to be governed without a parliament. Lord George could not have borrowed his ideas from Junius, provided he were not the author, as the speech was delivered in 1770, and the Letter of Junius, containing the allusions above referred to, was not then published."

The extreme hatred evinced by Junius to LORD MANSFIELD is notorious. "Our language," says he, in his letter to his Lordship, "has no term of reproach, the mind has no idea of detestation, which has not been happily applied to you, and exhausted." It is equally clear that Lord Mansfield was likewise the subject of Lord George's dislike; but the cause of this enmity is involved in considerable obscurity. Mr. Coventry says that it arose from Lord Mansfield's having assured him, previously to his trial, that he could not be convicted;

but as Lord Mansfield had been appointed Chief Justice in 1756, four years prior to Lord Sackville's trial, and then became a member of the Cabinet, it is not probable that he would give an extra-judicial opinion on a doubtful point of law. Mr. Butler, who was more likely to be correctly informed on a subject of this nature, suggests, that Lord George's hatred against Lord Mansfield arose from his being the secret and confidential adviser of government in all state prosecutions: but from whatever cause the antipathy may have originally arisen, it appears that Woodfall's trial before Lord Mansfield, for publishing Junius's Letter to the King, took place on the 13th of June 1770, and Junius's virulent Letter to Lord Mansfield is dated the 14th of November following. It is therefore not unlikely, that Lord George's dislike to Lord Mansfield was greatly heightened by the Chief Justice's conduct and demeanour on that trial; for we find, that when Serjeant Glynn brought forward his motion in the House of Commons on the 6th December following, for a committee to inquire into the administration of criminal justice, Lord George delivered the following speech on the occasion, in which a vein of satire and invective will be observed to run through the whole, under the mask of friendship for Lord Mansfield:

"Consider, gentlemen," says the orator, "what will be the consequence of refusing this demand, this debt, which you owe to the anxious expectation of the public. The people, seeing his avowed defenders so loth to bring him forth on the public stage, and to make him plead his cause before their tribunal, will naturally conclude, that he could not bear the light, because his deeds were evil; and that, therefore, you judged it advisable to screen him

U

behind the curtain of a majority. Though his conduct was never questioned in parliament, mark how he is every day, and every hour, pointed out in print and conversation, as a perverter of the law, and an enemy of the constitution. No epithet is too bad for him. Now he is the subtile Scroggs, now the arbitrary Jeffries. All the records of our courts of law, and all the monuments of our lawyers, are ransacked, in order to find sufficiently odious names by which he may be christened. The libellous and virulent spirit of the times has overleaped all the barriers of law, order, and decorum. The judges are no longer revered, and the laws have lost all their salutary terrors. Juries will not convict petty delinquents, when they suspect grand criminals go unpunished. Hence libels and lampoons, audacious beyond the example of all other times; libels, in comparison of which, the North Briton, once deemed the ne plus ultra of sedition, is perfect innocence and simplicity. The sacred number, Fortyfive, formerly the idol of the multitude, is eclipsed by the superior venom of every day's defamation: all its magical and talismanic powers are lost and absorbed in the general deluge of scandal which pours from the press. When matters are thus circumstanced, when the judges in general, and Lord Mansfield in particular, are there hung out to public scorn and detestation, now that libellers receive no countenance from men high in power and in the public esteem,-what will be the consequence when it is publicly known, that they have been arraigned, and that their friends quashed inquiry which it was proposed to make upon their conduct? The consequence is more easily conceived than expressed. I foresee that the imps of the press, the sons of ink, and the printers'

devils, will be all in motion; and they will spare you as little as they will the judges. Like the two thieves in the Gospel, both will be hung up and gibbeted, with the law crucified between you, for the entertainment of coffeehouse politicians, greasy carmen, and porters and barbers in tippling houses and night cellars. I cannot help thinking that it is the wish of Lord Mansfield himself to have his conduct examined; nay, I collect as much from the language of a gentleman who may be supposed to know his sentiments. What foundation then is there for

obstructing inquiry? None at all. It is a pleasure to me to see my noble friend discovering such symptoms of conscious innocence. His ideas perfectly coincide with my own. I would never oppose the minutest scrutiny into my behaviour. However much condemned by the envy or malice of enemies, I would at least shew that I stood acquitted in my own mind. Qui fugit judicium, ipso teste, reus est.”

Mr. Coventry considers this speech one of the most extraordinary ever delivered in the House of Commons. "Would any one," he asks, "who had any real feeling for another, place his noble friend in the degraded station of the thief in the Gospel, or gibbet him for the amusement of the vulgar! There is also ample testimony on the face of the speech to prove that no intimacy subsisted between them at this period, from the avowal that 'it was from the language of a gentleman who might be supposed to know his sentiments,' that he considered Lord Mansfield wished his conduct to be inquired into" (p. 189).

In allusion to the debate on Serjeant Glynn's motion, Junius says, in a letter dated December 13th, 1770: "Let it be known to posterity, that when Lord Mansfield was

attacked with so much vehemence in the House of Commons, on Thursday the 6th instant, not one of the Ministry said a word in his defence."

Here we find Junius and Lord George both acting against Lord Mansfield at the same time, and on the same subject, in so similar a manner as to be not a little remarkable, if they were not like la republique Française—

ONE AND INDIVISIBLE.

We have before noticed the extraordinary pains which Junius took to promote the interest of ALDERMAN SAWBRIDGE, and his strenuous endeavours to get him appointed Lord Mayor, and we learn from Mr. Coventry that the Alderman resided at Olintigh, in Kent. He was Major in the East Kent militia, and afterwards Colonel of the East Battalion, and on intimate terms with Sir Jeffery Amherst and Lord George Sackville.

These three families, whose estates were situated in Kent, possessed considerable influence in the county, particularly that of Lord George, being descended from an ancient and powerful house. He represented Hythe in two successive parliaments, in conjunction with William Glanville, Esq. On the decease of that gentleman, which took place in 1765, the vacancy was filled up by William Amherst, Esq., brother to Sir Jeffery. In the new parliament of 1768, Lord George resigned in favour of Alderman Sawbridge. The election was, however, strongly contested by the Ministerial party, but Lord George's interest was so great, that the Alderman was returned by a considerable majority. The line of politics pursued by Alderman Sawbridge was strictly in unison with Lord George's principles at this eventful period. Both were strenuous in their efforts to shorten the duration of parliaments.