ontrived to secure a copy of it, and read
it before the House; and the Lords, indignant and disgusted, voted an
address to the king to institute a prosecution against the author. The
Lords, by so doing, departed from the dignity of their order, and
their ordinary functions, and their persecution served to strengthen,
instead of weaken, the cause of Wilkes.

[Sidenote: Churchill.]

Associated with him, in his writings and his revels, was the poet
Churchill, a clergyman of the Establishment, but as open a contemner
of decency as Wilkes himself. For some years, his poetry had proved as
bad as his sermons, his time being spent in low dissipation. An
ill-natured criticism on his writings called forth his energies, and
he started, all at once, a giant in numbers, with all the fire of
Dryden and all the harmony of Pope. Imagination, wit, strength, and
sense, were crowded into his compositions; but he was careless of both
matter and manner, and wrote just what came in his way. "This
bacchanalian priest," says Horace Walpole, "now mouthing patriotism,
and now venting libertinism, the scourge of bad men, and scarce better
than the worst, debauching wives, and protecting his gown by the
weight of his fist, engaged with Wilkes in his war on the Scots, and
set himself up as the Hercules that was to cleanse the state and
punish its oppressors. And true it is, the storm that saved us was
raised in taverns and night-cellars; so much more effectual were the
orgies of Churchill and Wilkes than the dagger of Cato and Brutus.
Earl Temple joined them in mischief and dissipation, and whispered
where they might find torches, though he took care never to be seen to
light one himself. This triumvirate has even made me reflect that
nations are most commonly saved by the worst men in them. The virtuous
are too scrupulous to go the lengths which are necessary to rouse the
people against their tyrants."

[Sidenote: Grafton's Administration.]

The ferment created by the prosecution of Wilkes led to the
resignation of Mr. Grenville, in 1765, and the Marquis of Rockingham
succeeded him as head of the administration. He continued, however,
the prosecution. He retained his place but a few months, and was
succeeded by the Duke of Grafton, the object of such virulent
invective in the Letters of Junius, a work without elevation of
sentiment, without any appeal to generous principle, without
recognition of the eternal laws of justice, and without truth