To his TYRANNIC MAJESTY.—the DEVIL.
Most infernal Sir,
Do not affect the utmost Astonishment at this Address; it comes not in the tremendous form of a PETITION; of these your SULKY MAJESTY shall have no more during the short Time you can hope to Tyrannize over us in a regal Shape. What I humbly offer now, concerns, not your infested and afflicted KINGDOMS, so nearly as your dearer Self and Favourites. Your MAJESTY’S best beloved Spirits, Bute and Mansfield, the whole astonished World consider as the blackest Imps in all your Train; and yourself, as their humble Executioner. They advise, and you most condescendingly administer, Destruction. Their Ascendancy and your Humility, their Patriotism and your Discernment, their Wisdom and your Humanity, are Subjects of universal Admiration. But of all your most diabolical Virtues, satanic Sir, the most conspicuous is Hypocrisy. The Blaze of it, upon one Occasion, in particular, the Death of Lord Chancellor
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Yorke. (as Milton says) “far round illumin’d Hell.”1 As you can practise it so successfully for the Desolation, let me intreat you, gloomy Sir, to assume it now (by way of Frolic only) for the preservation of Mankind; but, above all, for your own precious Interest, much dearer to you than the Salvation of an inferior Universe. Your Majesty has disported yourself amidst the dangerous Indulgences of three most unprincely Passions; Pride, Anger, and Revenge, for Fourteen Years past; ever since the Demise of our good King, George the Second; in whose Reign your most hypocritical Highness was advised to wear the Mask of Decency and Circumspection. You then cast a favourable Glance only at Corruption; but you have since spurned the Reign of Policy, and broke out into such uncommon Tyrannies, such Bloody Inhumanities, unprovoked, that your despotic Highness must now either desist, or expect to be deserted and deposed. My great Tenderness for two of your Highnesses dearest Friends, the Scotch Lords Bute, and Mansfield, obliges me to give you this timely Notice. Should you still continue, dread Sir, to “have entire Confidence in the Wisdom of your Divan,” should you still “Steadily pursue those Measures which they have recommended”—your Reign can be but short; your animating Supporters Bute, and Mansfield, must surely fall. When these hellish Instigators of your Pride are gone, your unhappy Reign must end, when those Arch Fiends of Corruption and Iniquity, are no more, your wise Divan, will fall off from you like Water, they will neither support your wanton Slaughter in AMERICA, nor your pious Designs upon Great Britain, your faithful Pensioners will faint for want of these heartening supplies, with which they are now Daily refreshed in plenteous Streams, by your
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Majesty’s Feeder LORD NORTH, under the provident Eye of your best Subjects, Bute and Mansfield. When these Fountains of Milk and Honey, cease to flow, your Majesty’s hired Majority will grow languid and relaps into what they once were, and ever will be, mere Dissemblers of patriotic Virtue, even your Sovereign Tool of all, who now audaciously plumes himself upon their Support, will then foreswear any further Attachment to them, or you. When your chief Agents Lord Bute and Mansfield are extinct, what must become of Ways and Means, Arbitrary Taxation, and most effectual Methods for carrying these pregnant Schemes into a daring Execution, by Sword and Famine. Your Angels, Bute and Mansfield are excellent at these Devices but their fervent Zeal for your Highness’s Cause has, at last transported them beyond the Bounds of Judgment. Call these winged Hell-hounds off in Time, great Sir, if you value the preservation of your despotic Power; and as you have hitherto played the Tyrant for your Pleasure, begin now to play the Hypocrite for your Safety. Should you permit these Scotch Imps of yours to proceed farther, you will hazard all. We now feel certain Stretches of your persevering Powers, too great for human Patience, or human Nature to support long; assume, therefore, most steady Prince, in this dangerous Crisis, a Virtue, to which you are, in Truth, a Stranger. Play off, once more, an appearance of Clemency; it will be better timed now, than it ever was in the Cases of Sodomites, wanton Murderers, and military Cut-throats. Dissemble your causeless Anger, and effeminate Thirst for Blood. By this Stratagem you may, probably, make the easy, long-suffering, passive Fools, whom you wish to destroy, believe that your Majesty is really sincere, when you condescend to call them (with inward reluctance and disdain) “Your faithful and beloved People.”2 Believe me, most infernal Prince, this is the only way to compass their utter Ruin, with the least probable Security to your gracious Self, your wise Divan, your faithful Minions, your obsequious Assassins, and pensioned Parricides. By these Means, and by these alone, you may still live in prosperous, and plenteous Infamy. Thus, and thus
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only, can you hope to introduce, with Safety to yourself, that destructive plan of Tyranny, by which your beloved Bute and Mansfield, will immortalize your Reign. It must be introduced, my Prince, by gentle, slow Degrees. By your obdurate Steadiness, and precipitate Perseverance (Virtues not unworthy of a Devil) your darling Schemes may be suddenly extinguished, before you can have Time to declare again how much you are astonished at those Sufferers, who despise and detest you as much as CASCA.
To the Lords BUTE and MANSFIELD.
What Seas of Blood will Civil Discord shed?
Dire Fiend! by George’s Friends, Bute, North, and Mansfield, bred.
My LORDS,
YOUR Lordships will Pardon me, and I am sure your Brother North will readily excuse me, if I pass him by, for the Present, as a mere expletive in your execrable Triumvirate. He is, in Truth, my Lords, (and the World sees it) no more than the ostensible Leader of that fawning, false, corrupt Confederacy, who arrogantly groupe themselves under the specious Name of King’s Friends. Like designing Traytors, they, and you, my Lords, assume this Mask for the worst of Purposes; that of enriching your wretched Selves, by the Spoils of this unhappy Country; whilst your deluded, passive Sovereign, is but your stalking Horse. Poor, mean, obsequious, flexible Lord North, (like the rest of your servile Herd) is no more than the humble and callous Executioner of your infernal selfish Views, your inhuman Warrants, your destructive Bloody Policy. In a Word, my Lords, you are the Subtiles, and he is the Face.
To your Lordships, therefore, and to your Lordships only, as Principals, as the earliest and most indefatigable Deluders of weak and ductile Majesty; I now address myself, not in Terms of pleasing Flattery, but in the Rough, and odious Language of disgusting Truth. Such, my Lords, as
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the Sovereign is, the Nation has received him from your Hands. He was Born a BRITON; you, my Lords, have taught him not only to forget, but to shame his Birth. He was Born a Prince; you have levelled him with the worst, the most inhuman, and meanest of his Subjects. He became (too soon, alas!) a KING; you, my Lords, have debased him to a Tyrant. His Mind, though enlightened by no auspicious ray from Heaven, was yet capable of receiving some moderate degrees of Culture; it was, in its infant State, open at least to the impressions of HUMANITY; you, my Lords, in that early period, gave it a most unnatural, and unhappy Bent; you moulded, you contracted, you steeled it for your own wicked Purposes. To say the best of it, it remains, after all your painful Lectures, either totally unprincipled, or most atrociously perverted. Hence, my Patriotic Lords, have flowed (and still flow) all the Grievances of the present inglorious, ignoble, and inhuman Reign. Let me ring them in your Ears, my Lords:—Court—and Ministerial Assassinations, of which Martyn, Dun, and Talbot, can remind you, in Wilkes’s Case. In the same Case, in Bingley’s, and some others, Royal Persecutions, Star-Chamber Inquisition, erasing Records, inveigling, byassing, misleading, deceiving, over-bearing, and even packing Juries, by Lord Mansfield.3 Daring Corruptions and Perversions of Justice, by the same Hand, in the last Resort (the once righteous House of Lords) in the late Case of Thickness and Leigh, under the infamous, illegal, and unprecedented Conduct of Lord Apsley, Lord Mansfield, Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain. The unjust Proceedings in this Case will (to your immortal Infamy,
