happen to
affect their own interests and feelings.[2]

[I] 9. The "arbitrary condition" was that the General Court of
Massachusetts should rescind one of their own resolutions and expunge it
from their records. The whole of this passage in relation to
Hillsborough is as correct in point of fact, as it is well reasoned and
finely expressed.

[J] 10. The changes here censured had taken place about three
months before. The office of Foreign Secretary for the Southern
Department was made vacant by the resignation of Lord Shelburne.[3] Lord
Rochford, who had been minister to France, and thus made "acquainted
with the temper of the Southern courts," ought naturally to have been
appointed (if at all) to this department. Instead of this he was made
Secretary of the Northern Department, for which he had been prepared by
no previous knowledge; while Lord Weymouth was taken from the Home
Department, and placed in the Southern, being "_equally_ qualified"
[that is, wholly unqualified by any "experience whatsoever"] for either
department in the Foreign office, whether Southern or Northern.

[K] 11. As Secretary of the Home Department, Lord Weymouth had
addressed a letter to the magistrates of London, early in 1768, advising
them to call in the military, provided certain disturbances in the
streets should continue. The idea of setting the soldiery to fire on
masses of unarmed men has always been abhorrent to the English nation.
It was, therefore, a case admirably suited to the purposes of this
Letter. In using it to inflame the people against Lord Weymouth, Junius
charitably supposes that he was not repeating the errors of his
youth--that he was neither drunk, nor ignorant of what he did, nor
impelled by "the furious spirit" of one of the proudest families of the
realm--all of which Lord Weymouth would certainly say--and therefore
(which his Lordship must also admit) that he did, from "the deliberate
motion of his heart, supported by the best of his judgment," sign a
paper which the great body of the people considered as authorizing
promiscuous murder, and which actually resulted in the death of fourteen
persons three weeks after. The whole is so wrought up as to create the
feeling, that Lord Weymouth was in _both_ of these states of mind--that
he acted with _deliberation_ in carrying out the dictates of headlong or
drunken passion.

All this, of course, is greatly exaggerated. Severe measures did seem
indispensable to suppress