In the City, attempts were made to save three more condemned cutters of looms, and handbills were dispersed inviting the weavers to assemble on the morrow in Moorfields, in order to petition the King for a pardon; but Beckford, the new Lord Mayor, and the Sheriff Sawbridge went thither and persuaded them to disperse; and the cutters were hanged without disturbance.
These many essays towards an insurrection were crowned by the unparalleled remonstrance of Junius to the King, the most daring insult ever offered to a prince but in times of open rebellion, and aggravated by the many truths it contained. Nothing could exceed the singularity of this satire, but the impossibility of discovering the author. Three men were especially suspected, Wilkes, Edmund Burke, and William Gerard Hamilton. The desperate hardiness of the author in attacking men so great, so powerful, and some so brave, was reconcileable only to the situation of Wilkes; but the masterly talents that appeared in those writings were deemed superior to his abilities: yet in many of Junius’s letters an inequality was observed; and even in this remonstrance different hands seemed to have been employed. The laborious flow of style, and fertility of matter, made Burke believed the real Junius: yet he had not only constantly and solemnly denied any hand in those performances, but was not a man addicted to bitterness; nor could any one account for such indiscriminate attacks on men of such various descriptions and professions. Hamilton was most generally suspected. He, too, denied it--but his truth was not renowned. The quick intelligence of facts, and the researches into the arcana of every office, were far more uncommon than the invectives; and men wondered how any one possessed of such talents, could have the forbearance to write in a manner so desperate as to prevent his ever receiving personal applause for his writings: the venom was too black not to disgrace even his ashes.[255]
A _North Briton_, of very inferior or no merit, followed this remonstrance, and spared the two royal brothers no more than Junius had palliated the errors of the King. The Duke of Cumberland, a weak and debauched boy, was censured for an intrigue with a lady of rank, which became of public notoriety, and will be mentioned hereafter. The Duke of Gloucester, a virtuous, discreet, and unexceptionable Prince, had involved himself in a more serious affair; of which, as I can, I must give a more particular account than was known to others.