What Would Junius Do?

This morning I woke up with the name 'Junius' lodged in my brain, a residue from some kind of dream. Awake or sleeping, I had little idea of who 'Junius' was, but associated him vaguely with 18th-century political pamphleteering. This was roughly correct: the Letters of Junius were a pseudonymous series printed in the Public Advertiser between 1769 and 1772 with the aim of informing the English people of their historical and constitutional rights and liberties, and pointing out the various ways in which the government had infringed those rights. Useful work indeed – and bound to get the author into trouble, hence the pseudonym, which successfully concealed Junius's identity.
  Junius's style, it seems, does not lend itself to short quotation. However, one of his maxims adorns (or did adorn? Any Canadians out there?) the masthead of Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper: 'The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures.'
  In the light of these wise words, I have decided not to submit to this government's latest arbitrary measure – mandatory face masks in all shops. This is an initiative that might have been useful, and would certainly have been justifiable, back in March or April – when our old friends The Science advised firmly against it. Since then, not only has no good evidence of beneficial effect been found, but the level of Covid infection has fallen to the point where it doesn't even qualify statistically as an epidemic. To make mask wearing mandatory now is purely arbitrary. If the justification is to give those reduced to abject terror by the state the confidence to go forth into the world, then it is surely not within the legitimate powers of any government to use one section of the population to modify the behaviour of another. Virtually every measure taken by this supposedly conservative government has failed the Three Ts test – Timely, Targeted and Time-limited – and none more so that this latest initiative. It radically changes the nature of our society – one which was until now based on face-to-face, unmasked communication – for no good reason and with no indication of when, if ever, we shall be allowed to show our faces again. If that ain't arbitrary, I don't know what is.