ABSTRACT
J. Horne undoubtedly got the better of John Wilkes in that furious exchange of heavy epistolary broadsides that is known in pamphlet history as The Controversial Letters of Wilkes and Horne. Horne closed the Controversial Letters to Wilkes with possibly his best piece of writing and then compelled Junius to offer the public an explanation. Even when Horne, after marching the more “respectable” half of the Bill of Rights Society into revolt against Wilkes, was provoked into beginning a series of sledge-hammer attacks upon him by public letter, the full exposure of “patriot” dirty linen to public view, that resulted, hardly proved ruinous. “Patriots” even when divided, could not be deprived of public attention when for months at a time, especially during the Parliamentary Recess, they seemed to constitute the only active political forces in the country.
