extremely well calculated for the rabblement of addresses, the gala costume of would-be knights, but utterly unsafe to build upon. Let us attend a little to the private correspondence, at an earlier period of the same reign, passing between the unknown Junius and John Wilkes. And first for the "Alderman." "I have had the shivering fits of a slow, lurking fever (a strange disorder for Wilkes), which makes writing painful to me. I could plunge the patriot dagger in the heart of the tyrant of my country, but my hand would now tremble in doing it." Now let us hear the great unknown, who greets his love, "Not with vain thanks, but with acceptance bounteous." "Continue careful of your health. Your head is too useful to be spared, and your hand may be wanted." He then goes on to show the real object he would have attacked: "It is not Bute, nor even the princess dowager. It is (what the printer dares not publish), whom every honest man should detest, and every brave man should attack." In the partisans of such men, less cautious, and more enthusiastic, the king alluded to was likely to find most duteous subjects! they spoke treason |