"For my own part, far from thinking that the king can do no wrong; far from suffering myself to be deterred or imposed upon by the language of forms; if it were my misfortune to live under the inauspicious reign of a prince, whose whole life was employed in one base, contemptible struggle with the free spirit of his people, or in the _detestable_ endeavor to corrupt their moral principles, I would not scruple to declare to him: 'Sir, you alone are the author of the greatest wrong to your subjects and to yourself.... Has not the strength of the crown, whether influence or prerogative, been uniformly exerted for eleven years together, to support a narrow, pitiful system of government, which defeats itself and answers no one purpose of real power, profit, or personal satisfaction to you?'"--Pref. "The minister who, by secret corruption, invades the freedom of elections, and the ruffian [meaning the king] who, by open violence, destroys that freedom, are embarked in the same bottom."--Let. 8. "When Junius observes that kings are ready enough to follow such advice, he does not mean to insinuate that, if the advice of Parliament were good, the king would be so ready to follow it."--Let. 45. In commenting on the sentence spoken of the king, "_by whose_ NOD ALONE _they were permitted to do anything_," he says: "Here is idolatry even without a mask; and he who can calmly hear and digest such doctrine, hath forfeited his claim to rationality; is an apostate from the order of manhood, and ought to be considered as one who hath not only given up the proper dignity of man, but sunk himself beneath the rank of animals, and contemptibly crawls through the world like a worm. However, it matters very little now what the king of England either says or does; he hath wickedly broken through every moral and human obligation, trampled nature and conscience under his feet; and, by a steady and unconstitutional spirit of insolence and cruelty, procured for himself an universal hatred." "There is surely something singularly benevolent in the character of our sovereign. From the moment he ascended the throne, there is no crime of which human nature is capable (and I call upon the recorder to witness it) that has not appeared venial in his sight."--Let. 48.