Page:Letters of Junius, volume 2 (Woodfall, 1772).djvu/41

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JUNIUS.

31

pernicious lessons you received in your youth, and to form the most sanguine hopes from the natural benevolence of your disposition^[1]. We are far from thinking you capable of a direct, deliberate purpose to invade those original rights of your subjects, on which all their civil and political liberties depend. Had it been possible for us to entertain a suspicion so dishonourable to your character, we should

↑ The plan of the tutelage and future dominion over the heir apparent, laid many years ago, at Carlton-house, between the Princess Dowager, and her favourite the Earl of Bute, was as gross and palpable as that which was concerted between Ann of Austria and Cardinal Mazarin, to govern Louis the Fourteenth, and in effect to prolong his minority until the end of their lives. That prince had strong natural parts, and used frequently to blush for his own ignorance and want of education, which had been wilfully neglected by his mother and her minion. A little experience however soon shewed him how shamefully he had been treated, and for what infamous purposes he had been kept in ignorance. Our great Edward too, at an early period, had sense enough to understand the nature of the connexion between his abandoned mother, and the detested Mortimer. But, since that time, human nature, we may observe, is greatly altered for the better. Dowagers may be chaste, and minions may be honest. When it was proposed to settle the present King's household, a Prince of Wales, it is well known, that the Earl of Bute was forced into it, in direct contradiction to the late King's inclination. That was the salient point, from which all the mischiefs and disgraces of the present reign, took life and motion. From that moment, Lord Bute never suffered the Prince of Wales to be an instant out of his sight.—We need not look farther.

[1] The plan of the tutelage and future dominion over the heir apparent, laid many years ago, at Carlton-house, between the Princess Dowager, and her favourite the Earl of Bute, was as gross and palpable as that which was concerted between Ann of Austria and Cardinal Mazarin, to govern Louis the Fourteenth, and in effect to prolong his minority until the end of their lives. That prince had strong natural parts, and used frequently to blush for his own ignorance and want of education, which had been wilfully neglected by his mother and her minion. A little experience however soon shewed him how shamefully he had been treated, and for what infamous purposes he had been kept in ignorance. Our great Edward too, at an early period, had sense enough to understand the nature of the connexion between his abandoned mother, and the detested Mortimer. But, since that time, human nature, we may observe, is greatly altered for the better. Dowagers may be chaste, and minions may be honest. When it was proposed to settle the present King's household, a Prince of Wales, it is well known, that the Earl of Bute was forced into it, in direct contradiction to the late King's inclination. That was the salient point, from which all the mischiefs and disgraces of the present reign, took life and motion. From that moment, Lord Bute never suffered the Prince of Wales to be an instant out of his sight.—We need not look farther.

[1]