Page:Letters of Junius, volume 1 (Woodfall, 1772).djvu/167

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.

is interesting to society. On this principle, the people of England made common cause with Mr. Wilkes. On this principle, if you are injured, they will join in your resentment. I shall not follow you through the insipid form of a third person, but address myself to you directly.

You seem to think the channel of a pamphlet more respectable and better suited to the dignity of your cause, than that of a newspaper. Be it so. Yet, if news papers are scurrilous, you must confess they are impartial. They give us, without any apparent preference, the wit and argument of the Ministry, as well as the abusive dulness of the opposition. The scales are equally poised. It is not the printer's fault, if the greater weight inclines the balance.

Your pamphlet then, is divided into an attack upon Mr. Grenville's character, and a defence of your own. It would have been more consistent perhaps with your professed intention, to have confined yourself to the last. But anger has some claim to indulgence, and railing is usually a relief to the mind. I hope you have found benefit