s as a shocking and
shameless pretence. Never did an envenomed scurrility against everything
sacred and civil, public and private, rage through the kingdom with such
a furious and unbridled license. All this while the peace of the nation
must be shaken, to ruin one libeller, and to tear from the populace a
single favorite.

Nor is it that vice merely skulks in an obscure and contemptible
impunity. Does not the public behold with indignation, persons not only
generally scandalous in their lives, but the identical persons who, by
their society, their instruction, their example, their encouragement,
have drawn this man into the very faults which have furnished the cabal
with a pretence for his persecution, loaded with every kind of favor,
honor, and distinction, which a court can bestow? Add but the crime of
servility (the _foedum crimen servitutis_) to every other crime, and the
whole mass is immediately transmuted into virtue, and becomes the just
subject of reward and honor. When therefore I reflect upon this method
pursued by the cabal in distributing rewards and punishments, I must
conclude that Mr. Wilkes is the object of persecution, not on account of
what he has done in common with others who are the objects of reward,
but for that in which he differs from many of them: that he is pursued
for the spirited dispositions which are blended with his vices; for his
unconquerable firmness, for his resolute, indefatigable, strenuous
resistance against oppression.

In this case, therefore, it was not the man that was to be punished, nor
his faults that were to be discountenanced. Opposition to acts of power
was to be marked by a kind of civil proscription. The popularity which
should arise from such an opposition was to be shown unable to protect
it. The qualities by which court is made to the people, were to render
every fault inexpiable, and every error irretrievable. The qualities by
which court is made to power, were to cover and to sanctify everything.
He that will have a sure and honorable seat in the House of Commons must
take care how he adventures to cultivate popular qualities; otherwise he
may remember the old maxim, _Breves et infaustos populi Romani amores_.
If, therefore, a pursuit of popularity expose a man to greater dangers
than a disposition to servility, the principle which is the life and
soul of popular elections will perish out of the constitution.

It behoves the people of England to consider how th