Our readers cannot but remember, that, in order to break the spirit of the city of London, a writ of _quo warranto_ was issued against the incorporation, by which was instituted a vexatious and captious inquiry into the validity of the charter of London. The purpose of this process was to compel the city to resign their freedom and immunities into the king's hands, and to receive a new grant of them, so limited, as might be consistent with the views of the crown, or otherwise to declare them forfeited. One Thomas Hunt, a lawyer of some eminence, who had been solicitor for the Viscount Stafford when that unfortunate nobleman was tried for high treason, and had written upon the side of the tories, but had now altered his principles, stepped forward upon this occasion as the champion of the immunities of the city of London[1]. The ludicrous light in which the sheriffs are placed, during the scene with Grillon in the third act, gave great offence to this active partizan; and he gives vent to his displeasure in the following attack upon the author, and the performance. "They have already condemned the charter and city, and have executed the magistrates in effigy upon the stage, in a play called "The Duke of Guise," frequently acted and applauded; intended most certainly, to provoke the rabble into tumults and disorder. The Roman priest had no success, (God be thanked,) when he animated the people not to suffer the same sheriffs to be carried through the city to the Tower, prisoners. Now the poet hath undertaken, for their being kicked three or four times a-week about the stage to the gallows, infamously rogued and rascalled, to try what he can do towards making the charter forfeitable, by some extravagancy and disorder of the people, which the authority of the best governed cities have not been able to prevent, sometimes under far less provocations. "But this ought not to move the citizens, when he hath so maliciously and mischievously represented the king, and the king's son, nay, and his favourite the duke too, to whom he gives the worst strokes of his unlucky fancy. "He puts the king under the person of Henry III. of France, who appeared in the head of the _Parisian_ massacre; the king's son under the person of the Duke of Guise, who concerted it with the Queen-mother of France, and was slain in that very place, by the righteous judgment of God, where he and his mother had first contrived it. "The Duke of Guise ought to have represented a great prince, that had inserved to some most detestable villany, to please the rage, or lust, of a tyrant. "Such great courtiers have been often sacrificed, to appease the furies of the tyrant's guilty conscience, to expiate for his sin, and to atone the people.