Page:Letters of Junius, volume 2 (Woodfall, 1772).djvu/212

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202
LETTERS OF

by appearances so very strongly against you, what are your friends to say in your defence? Must they not confess, that, to gratify your personal hatred of Mr. Wilkes, you sacrificed, as far as depended on your interest and abilities, the cause of the country? I can make allowance for the violence of the passions; and if ever I should be convinced that you had no motive but to destroy Wilkes, I shall then be ready to do justice to your character, and to declare to the world, that I despise you somewhat less than I do at present.—But, as a public man, I must for ever condemn you. You cannot but know,—nay, you dare not pretend to be ignorant that the highest gratifications of which the most detestable in this nation is capable, would have been the defeat of Wilkes. I know that man much better than any of you. Nature intended him only for a good-humoured fool. A systematical education, with long practice, has made him a consummate hypocrite. Yet this man, to say nothing of his worthy Ministers, you have most assiduously laboured to gratify. To exclude Wilkes, it was not necessary you should solicit votes for his opponents. We incline