Page:Letters of Junius, volume 2 (Woodfall, 1772).djvu/259

what enormous excesses it has safely conducted your grace, without a ray of real understanding, without even the pretensions to common decency or principle of any kind, or a single spark of personal resolution. What must be the operation of that pernicious influence (for which our Kings have wisely exchanged the nugatory name of prerogative) that in the highest stations can so abundantly supply the absence of virtue, courage, and abilities, and qualify a man to be a minister of a great nation, whom a private gentleman would be ashamed and afraid to admit into his family? Like the universal passport of an ambassador, it supersedes the prohibition of the laws, banishes the staple virtues of the country, and introduces vice and folly triumphantly into all the departments of the state. Other princes, besides his majesty, have had the means of corruption within their reach, but they have used it with moderation. In former times, corruption was considered as a foreign auxiliary to government, and only called in upon extraordinary emergencies. The unfeigned piety, the sanctified religion of George the Third, have taught him to new model the civil forces of the state. The natural resources of