happiness at home! Oh, right! more dear to us than our existence, which has
already cost us so much, and which seems likely to cost us our all.
Infatuated man! Miserable and undone country! not to know that the claim of
right, without the power of enforcing it, is nugatory and idle. We have a
right to tax America, the noble lord tells us therefore we ought to tax
America. This is the profound logic which comprises the whole chain of his
reasoning.

Not inferior to this was the wisdom of him who resolved to shear the wolf.
What, shear a wolf! Have you considered the resistance, the difficulty, the
danger of the attempt? No, says the madman, I have considered nothing but
the right. Man has a right of dominion over the beasts of the forest; and
therefore I will shear the wolf.

How wonderful that a nation could be thus deluded! But the noble lord deals
in cheats and delusions. They are the daily traffic of his invention; and
he will continue to play to his cheats on this House, so long as he thinks
them necessary to his purpose, and so long as he has money enough at
command to bribe gentlemen to pretend that they believe him. But a black
and bitter day of reckoning will surely come; and whenever that day comes,
I trust I shall be able, by a parliamentary impeachment, to bring upon the
heads of the authors of our calamities the punishment they deserve.
E. Burke.


CXLIII.

DESCRIPTION OF JUNIUS.

Sir,--How comes this Junius to have broken through the cobwebs of the law,