Page:Letters of Junius, volume 1 (Woodfall, 1772).djvu/213

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relieving their beggary, at the expence of his country. He would not have betrayed such ignorance, or such contempt of the constitution, as openly to avow, in a court of justice, the [1] purchase and sale of a borough. He would not have thought it consistent with his rank in the state, or even with his personal importance, to be the little tyrant of a little corporation.[2] He would never have been insulted with virtues which he had laboured to extinguish, nor suffered the disgrace of a mortifying defeat, which has made him ridiculous and contemptible, even to the few by whom he was not detested.—I reverence the afflictions of a good man,—his sorrows are sacred. But how can we take part in the distresses of a man, whom we can neither love or esteem; or feel for a calamity, of which he himself is insensible? Where was the father's heart, when he could look for, or find an immediate consolation for the loss

  1. In an answer in Chancery, in a suit against him to recover a large sum, paid him by a person, whom he had undertaken to return to parliament, for one of his Grace's boroughs, he was compelled to repay the money.
  2. Of Bedford, where the tyrant was held in such contempt and detestation, that, in order to deliver themselves from him, they admitted a great number of strangers to the freedom. To make his defeat truly ridiculous, he tried his whole strength against Mr. Horne, and was beaten upon his own ground.