Junius, Volume 1

Front Cover
T. Bensley, 1797 - English letters
 

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Page 162 - You are so little accustomed to receive any marks of respect or esteem from the public, that if in the following lines a compliment or expression of applause should escape me, I fear you would consider it as a mockery of your established character, and perhaps an insult to your understanding.
Page 246 - ... sentiments by which his private conduct had been directed ; and seemed to think, that as there are few excesses in which an English gentleman may not be permitted to indulge, the same latitude was allowed him in the choice of his political principles, and in the spirit of maintaining them. I mean to state, not entirely to defend, his conduct. In the earnestness of his zeal, he suffered some unwarrantable insinuations to escape him. He said more than moderate men would justify, but not enough...
Page 166 - ... interest and respect, which he might have acquired, not only in parliament, but through the whole kingdom : — compare these glorious distinctions with the ambition of holding a share in government, the emoluments of a place, the sale of a borough, or the purchase of a corporation; and though you may not regret the virtues which create respect, you may see with anguish how much real importance and authority you have lost.
Page 80 - It is not that your indolence and your activity have been equally misapplied, but that the first uniform principle, or, if I may so call it, the genius of your life, should have carried you through every possible change and contradiction of conduct without the momentary imputation or colour of a virtue, and that the wildest spirit of inconsistency should never once have betrayed you into a wise or honourable action.
Page 154 - We owe it to our ancestors to preserve entire those rights, which they have delivered to our care : we owe it to our posterity, not to suffer their dearest inheritance to be destroyed.
Page 149 - On the 17th, it was resolved, that John Wilkes, Esq. having been in this session of parliament expelled the House, was, and is, incapable of being elected a member to serve in this present parliament.
Page 5 - THE submission of a free people to the executive authority of government is no more than a compliance with laws, which they themselves have enacted. While the national honour is firmly maintained abroad, and while justice is impartially administered at home, the obedience of the subject will be voluntary, chearful, and I might almost say, unlimited.
Page 259 - By depriving a subject of his birth-right, they have attributed to their own vote an authority equal to an act of the whole legislature ; and, though perhaps not with the same motives, have strictly followed the example of the Long Parliament, which first declared the regal office useless, and soon after, with as little ceremony, dissolved the House of Lords. The same pretended power which robs an English subject of his birth-right, may rob an English King of his crown.
Page 17 - ... united, we expect the noble pride and independence of a man of spirit, not the servile humiliating complaisance of a courtier. As to the goodness of his heart, if a proof of it be taken from the facility of never refusing, what conclusion shall we draw from the indecency of never performing?
Page 100 - 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.

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