iled his periods it was to drive the knife deeper and surer,
with an audacity of denunciation and sternness of animosity, with a
corrosive and burning irony applied to the most secret corners of
private life, with an inexorable persistence of calculated and
meditated persecution.

The first few letters of Junius were devoted to an altercation with Sir
William Draper over the character in the first place of Lord Granby and
in the second place of Lord Granby's defender, Sir William Draper. Sir
William, though he fought stoutly for his friend and stoutly for
himself, did neither himself nor his friend much good by engaging in
the controversy. He was no match for the weapons of Junius. He had
neither the wit nor the venom of his antagonist. But the great
interest of the letters began when Junius, taking up the cause of
Wilkes, struck at higher game than Sir William Draper or Lord Granby.
His first letter to the Duke of Grafton was an indictment of the Duke
for the conduct of the Crown in the case of a murder trial arising out
of the Brentford election. A young man named George Clarke had been
killed in a riot and a man named Edward M'Quirk was tried and found
guilty of the murder. A kind of hugger-mugger inquest produced a
declaration that Clarke's death was not caused by the blow he had
received from his assailant, and in consequence, "whereas a doubt had
arisen in our royal breast," the King formally pardoned the murderer by
royal {130} proclamation. On this theme Junius lashed Grafton and
concluded his letter with a direct allusion to Wilkes. He asked if
Grafton had forgotten, while he was withdrawing this desperate wretch
from that justice which the laws had awarded and which the whole people
of England demanded, that there was another man, the favorite of his
country, whose pardon would have been accepted with gratitude, whose
pardon would have healed all divisions. "Have you quite forgotten that
this man was once your Grace's friend? Or is it to murderers only that
you will extend the mercy of the Crown?"

The attack thus daringly begun was steadily maintained. Wilkes had no
keener, no acuter champion than Junius. With great skill Junius
avoided all appearance of violent partisanship. He was careful to
censure much in Wilkes's conduct, careful to discriminate between
Wilkes's private character and Wilkes's public conduct. The
unjustifiable action of the House of Commons in forcing Colonel
Luttrell upon