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THE

CRISIS

NUMBER XXIII	To be continued Weekly.
SATURDAY, JUNE 24, 1775	[Price Two-pence Half-penny.

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, Lord Mansfield) be handed down to the latest Posterity—even a Jeffereys would have blushed at them. As for your Shadow, Apsley; your dependant Scots, Cathcart and

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Galloway,⁴ and your Bully Denbigh, they are but Tools in your Lordship’s Craft, they live by the Breath of your Lordship’s Nostrils, and are too inconsiderable to be named either by Historian or Reporter; but Lord Mansfield’s Name and Doctrines will be faithfully recorded.—Now, my Lords, I returns to Grievances, the Offspring of your Scotch Politics. Among others, you may recollect the Violation of the Freedom of Election, and the Lives you have to answer for at the Middlesex Election, in Support of your Court-Tool, Sir William Beauchamp Procter.⁵ Your Lordships, and your royal Pupil, countenanced a still greater Violation of the Rights of Election, which was most impudently and perfidiously avowed, and sanctified by a corrupt House of Commons, in the Case of that insignificant Time-server, Colonel Lutterell, the King’s Brother in Law.⁶ Let me now remind your Lordships (for you are too callous to be shocked with the Sound) of Murders (repeated, wanton Murders) at the Brentford Election, and in St. George’s Fields, even of Women and

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Children. The barbarous Carnage of young Allen (naked and unarmed) must be attoned for.—By whose Advise, and with whose Privity, my Lords, did your Pupil return public Thanks for this Slaughter of his Subjects; who in the one Case were but curious Gazers, and in the other, were discharging their Duties as honest, independant Electors, above ministerial Bribery and Corruption? Let me ask you, my Lord Mansfield, the Lord Chief Justice of England (whose Duty it was to bring these ministerial Cut-throats to condign Punishment) why were these guilty Miscreants screened, protected, pardoned, pensioned? Why, and by whose Orders (unless yours, my Lord) was so much affected Tenderness, Management, brow-beating of the Prosecutor’s Council and Witnesses, such nice Caution in summing up the Evidence, such Menaces against those who should dare to print these public Trials, but particularly that of young Allen? Why did your Lordship’s upright, holy, and favourite Judge, Smythe,⁷ so signalize himself, and labour with such uncommon Partiality? Why were the known Laws of England, dispensed with in the Case of the military Scotch Ruffians, who spilled the innocent Blood of Allen in St. Georges’s Fields? Who suggested the happy Thought of dissolving the last Parliament on a sudden, and of smuggling and packing (by means of private Intimations to the Court-Members) a corrupt Majority in the present House of Commons in support of the ruinous and despotic Plan laid by your Lordships, and carried on by your obsequious Instrument Lord North, and his pensionary Subalterns in both Houses of Parliament? How, and by whom, are the Seats of Justice to be filled for

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the future, my Lords, and for what Purposes? I will not ask, what knowledge of the Laws, but what Interest, what private Reasons, made such a Man as Hotham, a Baron of the Exchequer?⁸—This is a new Grievance and a real one.

“I liacos intra muros peccator, et extra.”

Within St. Stephen’s Chapel, and without;

That All’s one Scene of Guilt, we need not doubt.⁹

Perret sells out, Hotham buys in, and his Seat in Parliament is thus purchased and filled up by your Lordships.¹⁰ I must interrogate your Lordships still further—Of all your other wicked Counsels, what impolitic, diabolical Spirit, could instigate you to advise your Pupil ever to consent

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to, much more to persevere, in the inhuman Massacre of America? Why were the Petitions of the City of London answered in your Reign, my Lords, with Sneers, Insults, Abuse, Menaces, indignent Frowns, and even with Accusations of High Treason? I refer your Lordships to your last Bashaw-like Answer to the City Petition, where you will find (to the general Astonishment) that you have almost impeached a part of his Majesty’s faithful and beloved* People, of High Treason, for only making a constitutional Supplication to the Throne; for humbly remonstrating against the pernicious Influence of Corruption and your Lordships; and for expressing natural and just Feelings for their Fellow Subjects, doomed by your Lordships to Destruction in America.

These my Lords, are some of the most palpable Wounds which your Lordships have, by Hirelings and Dupes, already given, there are others in Embryo, which you are about to give to the British Constitution. For these Iniquities, when your Measure is full, my Lords, you must assuredly account at last, unless, like true Cowards, you fly from Public Justice, or disappoint the meritorious Executioner, by the timely Application of your own guilty Hands, to the rottenest and most detested Hearts that ever beat. It can be no Secret to your Lordships, that you are universaly considered as the CATALINES¹¹ of an imperious Gang of Ministerial Parricides, you must be sensible that the Nation has hitherto submitted with unexampled Patience, not, properly speaking, so much to the puerile Obstinacy of a Brunswick, as to the despotic sway of a Bute

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and Mansfield; at once the greatest Tyrants, and the greatest Traytors, and the greatest Cowards under Heaven. The truth of these Assertions is fully proved by your banefull Councils, from whence all the Grievances above mentioned have arose, and from whence more (I fear) will shortly spring. If murdering their Innocence and Virtue, in the Subject and extinguishing their influence in the Sovereign, is Tyranny, Treason, and rank Cowardice, I am no false accuser of your Lordships. The Instances I have already given, are such as would blacken the Reigns of a NERO, or DOMITIAN,¹² but they are such my Lords as sprung Naturally from those infernal Institutes which your Lordships have incessantly penned and preached, for the Edification of a British King; of a King; who neither does, nor possibly can, hold the Crown of England upon such Principles as your Lordships have laboured to instill, these Labours, my Lords, are crying Sins against the Liberties, and Majesty of this Nation, and the Wages of these Sins is Death.

The present Generation (like that which called this Family to the Throne) are Revolutionists; your Lordships are, we know, of a contrary Perswasion. Under such Tutors our steady, persevering, unhappy Sovereign, must have imbibed the most unconstitutional, absurd, and fatal Notions. Your Lordships should have Taught him in his earliest Days, that Steadiness and Perseverance can never be maintained with Reason, but in the Cause of Truth and Virtue, Justice and Humanity. Cast your Eyes, my Lords, upon the black Catalogue of Crimes above enumerated, and say in which of them a Spark of Virtue can be seen? Turn over the political Institutes you have penned for your royal Pupil’s use, and say in what part of that elaborate Manuel, you have, with Truth, delineated the Prince, the Politician, or the Soldier? Nay, the Man of Honour, Humanity,

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or Common Honesty? It is too well known, it is most severely felt, that your Sovereign has from his Infancy proceeded, and still magnanimously persists, upon the Plan formed by your Lordships for his Direction. He opens his Ears and his Heart (if he ever opens them at all) to you alone. He cajoles his Parliament, he despises his People, but he confides in you. After all, my Lords, what is this Confidence in your Lordships likely to produce? A Snare to him, and Ruin to his People. Your Lordships have vitiated his Soul with every Quality of a genuine Scot, except true Valour, and Discernment. The one would, in your Opinion, have made England too Happy, the other would have made yourselves too odious. This would have blasted your impious Designs, and that would have crushed your pusillanimous and baneful Politics. The bitter Fruits of your political System, my Lords, begin now to ripen into a total Desolation, or, at least, an irrecoverable loss of a large, a valuable, a virtuous, (and therefore an obnoxious) part of the British Empire, into Foreign Wars; and intestine Commotions and Calamities; into universal Discontent and Slaughter; into Misery, Revenge, Anarchy, and a Revolution. Every feeling Man most devoutly wishes your Lordships an ample, and a speedy Share of that National Resentment, which you have in Season, and out of Season, laboured to deserve. That your pernicious and detested Lives may be prolonged, till your Lordships shall receive from the Hand of Public Justice, the Reward of all your indefatigable Pains to betray your King, and destroy your Country, is the Prayer of

CASCA.

YES.

Printed and published for the Authors, by T. W. SHAW, in Fleet-Street, opposite Anderton’s Coffee House, where Letters to the Publisher, will be thankfully received.