But, whatever may be thought of the origin of these Letters, it is not difficult te understand the political relations of the writer, and the feelings by which he was actuated. A few remarks on this subject will close the present sketch.

The author of these Letters, as we learn from Woodfall, had been for some years an active political partisan. He had written largely for the public prints under various signatures, and with great ability. A crisis now arrived which induced him to come forward under a new name, and urged him by still higher motives to the utmost exertion of his powers. Lord Chatham's "checkered and dovetailed" cabinet had fallen to pieces, and the Duke of Grafton, as Junius expressed it, became "minister by accident," at the close of 1767. He immediately endeavored to strengthen himself on every side. He yielded to the wishes of the King by making Lord North Chancellor of the Exchequer, and by raising Mr. Jenkinson, the organ of Lord Bute, to higher office and influence. Thus he gave a decided ascendency to the Tories. On the other hand, he endeavored to conciliate Lord Rockingham and the Duke of Bedford by very liberal proposals. But these gentlemen differing as to the lead of the House, the Bedford interest prevailed; Lord Weymouth, a member of that family, was made Secretary of the Home Department; while Lord Rockingham was sent back to the ranks of Opposition under a sense of wrong and insult. Six months, down almost to the middle of 1768, were spent in these negotiations and arrangements. These things wrought powerfully on the mind of Junius, who was a Grenville or Rockingham Whig. But in addition to this, he had strong private animosities. He not only saw with alarm and abhorrence the triumph of Tory principles, but he cherished the keenest personal resentment toward the King and most of his ministers. Those, especially, who had deserted their former Whig associates, he regarded as traitors to the cause of liberty. He therefore now determined to give full scope to his feelings, and to take up a system of attack far more galling to his opponents than had ever yet been adopted. One thing was favorable to such a design. Parliament was to expire within a few months; and every blow now struck would give double alarm and distress to the government, while it served also to inflame the minds of the people, and rouse them to a more determined resistance in the approaching elec ons. Accordingly, at the close of the Christmas holidays, when the business of the session really commences, he addressed his first Letter to the printer of the Public Advertiser, under date of January 21, 1769. It was elaborated with great care; but its most striking peculiarity was the daring spirit of personal attack by which it was characterized. Junius, for the first time, broke through the barriers thrown around the monarch by the maxim, " the King can do no wrong." He assailed him like any other man, though in more courtly and guarded language. Assuming an air of great respect for his motives, he threw out the most subtle insinuations, mingled with the keenest irony, as to his "love of low intrigue," and "the treacherous amusement of double and triple negotiations." It was plainly his intention not only to distress, but to terrify. He represented the people as driven to the verge of desperation. He hinted at the possible consequences. He spoke of the crisis as one "from which a reasonable man can expect no remedy but poison, no relief but death." He attacked the ministry in more direct terms, commenting with great severity on the or, at least, the revision of the Letters; for the writer was plainly not an author by profession. In short, Francis may have been to him, in respect to these Letters, what Burke was more fully to Lord Rockingham, and what Alexander Hamilton was at times to Washington. On this theory the government would have the same motives to buy off Sir Philip Francis, a thing they seem plainly to have done when these Letters stopped so suddenly in 1772. It may have been a condition male by Junius in favor of his friend. To have made it for himself seems inconsistent with his whole character and bearing, both in his Letters to the public and his confidential communi rations to Woodfall. The theory is, at least, an ingenious one, and has therefore been here stated. It has, however, very serious difficulties, as the reader will easily perceive.

character of those who filled the principal departments of state, and declaring, “We need look no farther for the cause of every mischief which befalls us." "It is not a casual concurrence of calamitous circumstances-it is the pernicious hanl of government alone, that can make a whole people desperate." All this was done with a dignity, force, and elegance entirely without parallel in the columns of a newspaper. The attention of the public was strongly arrested. The poet Gray, in his corre spondence, speaks of the absorbing power of this Letter over his mind, when he took it up casually for the first time at a country inn, where he had stopped for refreshment on a journey. He was unable to lay it down, or even to think of the food before him, un til he had read it over and over again with the most painful interest. The same pro found sensation was awakened in the higher political circles throughout the kingdom. Still it may be doubted whether the writer, at this time, had formed any definite plan of continuing these Letters. Very possibly, except for a circumstance now to be mentioned, he might have stopped here; and the name of Junius have been known only in our literature by this single specimen of eloquent vituperation. But he was instantly attacked. As if for the very purpose of compelling him to go on, and of giving notoriety to his efforts, Sir William Draper, Knight of the Bath, came out under his own signature, charging him with "maliciously traducing the best characters of the kingdom," and going on particularly to defend the Commander in Chief, the Marquess of Granby, against the severe imputations of this Letter. Junius himself could not have asked, or conceived of, any thing more perfectly suited to make him conspicuous in the eyes of the public. Sir William had the character of being an elegant scholar, and had gained high distinction as an officer in the army by the capture of Manilla, the capital of the Philippine Islands, in 1762. It was no light thing for such a man to throw himself into the lists without any personal provoca tion, and challenge a combat with this unknown champion. It was the highest possible testimony to his powers. Junius saw his advantage. He perfectly understood his antagonist-an open-hearted and incautious man, vain of his literary attainments, and uncommonly sensitive to ridicule and contempt. He seized at once or the weak points of Sir William's letter. He turned the argument against him. He overwhelmed him with derision. He showed infinite dexterity in wresting every weapon from his hands, and in turning all his praises of the Marquess, and apologies for his failings, into new instruments of attack. "It is you, Sir William, who make your friend appear awkward and ridiculous, by giving him a laced suit of tawdry qualifications which Nature never intended him to wear!" "It is you who have taken pains to represent your friend in the character of a drunken landlord, who deals out his promises as liberally as his liquor, and will suffer no man to leave his table either sorrowful or sober!" He then turned upon Sir William himself. He glanced at some of the leading transactions of his life. He goaded him with the most humiliating insinuations and interrogatories. He hinted at the motives which the public would impute to him, in thus coming out from his retirement at Clifton; and concluded by asking in a tone of lofty contempt, "And do you now, after a retreat not very like that of Scipio, presume to intrude yourself, unthought of, uncalled for, upon the patience of the public?" Never was an assailant so instantaneously put on the defensive. Instead of silencing the "traducer," and making him the object of public indignation, he was himself dragged to the confessional, or rather placed as a culprit at the bar of the public. His feelings at this sudden change seem much to have resembled those of a traveler in the forests of Africa, when he finds himself, without a moment's warning, wrapped in the folds of a boa constrictor, darting from above, and crushed beneath its weight. He exclaimed piteously against this "uncandid Junius," his " abominable scandals," his delight in putting men to “ the rack," and "mangling their carcasses with a hatchet." He quoted Virgil, and made a feeling

allusion to Esop's Fables "You bite against a file; cease, viper!" Junius replied in three Letters, two of which will be found below. He tells Sir William that ar "academical education had given him an unlimited command over the most beautiul figures of speech." "Masks, hatchets, racks, and vipers dance through your let ters in all the mazes of metaphorical confusion. These are the gloomy companions of a disturbed imagination; the melancholy madness of poetry, without the inspiration." As the correspondence went on, Sir William did, indeed, clear himself of the imputations thrown out by Junius affecting his personal honesty, but he was so shocked and confounded by the overmastering power of his antagonist, that he soon gave up the contest. Some months after, when he saw these Letters collected and republished in a volume, he again came forward to complain of their injustice. "Hæret lateri lethalis arundo,"s was the savage exclamation of Junius, when he saw the writhings of his prostrate foe. Such was the first encounter of Junius before the public. The whole nation looked on with astonishment; and from this hour his name was known as familiarly in every part of the kingdom as that of Chatham or Johnson. It was a name of terror to the King and his ministers; and of pride and exultation to thousands throughout the empire, not only of those who sympathized in his malignant feelings, but those who, like Burke, condemned his spirit, and yet considered him engaged in a just cause, and hailed him as a defender of the invaded rights of the people. Junius now resumed his attack on the ministry with still greater boldness and virulence. After assailing the Duke of Grafton repeatedly on individual points, he came out in two Letters, under date of May 30th and July 8th, 1769, with a gen eral review of his Grace's life and conduct. These are among his most finished prc ductions, and will be given below. On the 19th of September, he attacked the Duke of Bedford, whose interests had been preferred to those of Lord Rockingham in the ministerial arrangements mentioned above. This Letter has even more force than the two preceding ones, and will also be found in this collection. Three months after, December 19th, 1769, appeared his celebrated Letter to the King, the longest and most elaborate of all his performances. The reader will agree with Mr. Burke in saying, "it contains many bold truths by which a wise prince might profit." Lord Chatham now made his appearance on the stage, after an illness of three years; and at the opening of Parliament, January 9th, 1770, took up the cause with more than his accustomed boldness and eloquence. Without partaking of the bitter spirit of Junius, he maintained his principles on all the great questions of the day, in their fullest extent. He at once declared in the face of the country, "A breach has been made in the Constitution-the battlements are dismantled-the citadel is open to the first invader-the walls totter-the Constitution is not tenable. What remains, then, but for us to stand foremost in the breach, to repair it, or perish in it?" The result has already been stated in connection with that and his other speech on this subject, p. 114-18. At the end of nineteen days, January 28th, 1770, the Duke of Grafton was driven from power! About a fortnight after, Junius addressed his fallen adversary in a Letter of great force, which closes the extracts from his writings in this volume. Lord North's ministry now commenced. Junius continued his labors with various ability, but with little success, nearly two years longer, until, in the month of January, 1772, the King remarked to a friend in confidence, “Junius is known, and will write no more." Such proved to be the fact. His last performance was dated January 21st, 1772, three years to a day from his first great Letter to the printer of the Public Advertiser. Within a few months Sir PHILIP FRANCIS was appointed to one of the highest stations of profit and trust in India, at a distance of fifteen thousand miles from the seat of English politics!

8 Still rankles in his side the fatal dart.

LETTERS OF JUNIUS.

LETTER

TO THE PRINTER OF THE PUBLIC ADVERTISER.J

SIR,-The submission of a free people to the executive authority of government is no more than a compliance with laws which they themselves have enacted. While the national honor is firmly maintained abroad, and while justice is impartially administered at home, the obedience of the subject will be voluntary, cheerful, and, I might say, almost unlimited. A generous nation is grateful even for the preservation of its rights, and willingly extends the respect due to the office of a good prince into an affection for his person. Loyalty, in the heart and understanding of an Englishman, is a rational attachment to the guardian of the laws. Prejudices and passion have sometimes carried it to a criminal length; and, whatever foreigners may imagine, we know that Englishmen have erred as much in a mistaken zeal for particular persons and families, as they ever did in defense of what they thought most dear and interesting to themselves.

It naturally fills us with resentment to see such a temper insulted and abused.2 In reading

the history of a free people, whose rights have been invaded, we are interested in their cause. Our own feelings tell us how long they ought to have submitted, and at what moment it would have been treachery to themselves not to have resisted. How much warmer will be our re sentment, if experience should bring the fatal example home to ourselves!

The situation of this country is alarming enough to rouse the attention of every man who pretends to a concern for the public welfare. Appearances justify suspicion; and, when the safety of a nation is at stake, suspicion is a just ground of inquiry. Let us enter into it with candor and decency. Respect is due to the station of ministers; and if a resolution must at last be taken, there is none so likely to be supported with firmness as that which has been adopted with moderation.

The ruin or prosperity of a state depends so

affection (as shown in their history) had often been excessive among the English, who were, in fact, peculiarly liable to a "mistaken zeal for particular 1 Dated January 21, 1769. There is great regu- persons and families." Hence they were equally larity in the structure of this letter. The first two liable (this is not said, but implied) to have their paragraphs contain the exordium. The transition loyalty imposed upon; and therefore the feeling follows in the third paragraph, leading to the main then so prevalent was well founded, that the King, proposition, which is contained in the fourth, viz., in his rash counsels and reckless choice of minis. "that the existing discontent and disasters of the ters, must have been taking advantage of the gennation were justly chargeable on the King and min- erous confidence of his people, and playing on the istry." The next eight paragraphs are intended to easiness of their temper. If so, they were indeed give the proof of this proposition, by reviewing the insulted and abused. The exordium, then, is a chief departments of government, and endeavoring complete chain of logical deduction, and the case to show the incompetency or maladministration of is fully made out, provided the popular feeling rethe men to whom they were intrusted. A recapit- ferred to was correct. And here we see where the ulation follows in the last paragraph but one, lead- fallacy of Junius lies, whenever he is in the wrong. ing to a restatement of the proposition in still broad- It is in taking for granted one of the steps of his er terms. This is strengthened in the conclusion by reasoning. He does not, in this case, even mention the remark, that if the nation should escape from its the feeling alluded to in direct terms. He knew it desperate condition through some signal interposi- was beating in the hearts of the people; his whole tion of Divine Providence, posterity would not be-preceding train of thought was calculated to justify lieve the history of the times, or consider it possible that England should have survived a crisis "so full of terror and despair."

* We have here the starting point of the exordium, as it lay originally in the mind of Junius, viz., that the English nation was "insulted and abused" by the King and ministers. But this was too strong a statement to be brought out abruptly. Junius therefore went back, and prepared the way by show ing in successive sentences, (1.) Why a free people obey the laws-" because they have themselves enacted them." (2.) That this obedience is ordinarily cheerful, and almost unlimited. (3.) That such obedience to the guardian of the laws naturally leads to a strong affection for his person. (4.) That this

and inflame it; and he therefore leaps at once to the conclusion it involves, and addresses them as actually filled with resentment "to see such a temper insulted and abused." The feeling, in this instance, was to a great extent well founded, and so far his logic is complete. In other cases his assump. tion is a false one. He lays hold of some slander of the day, some distorted statement of facts, some maxim which is only half true, some prevailing passion or prejudice, and, dexterously intermingling them with a train of thought which in every other respect is logical and just, he hurries the mind to a conclusion which seems necessarily involved in the premises. Hardly any writer has so much art and plausibility in thus misleading the mind.

Without much political sagacity, or any extraordinary depth of observation, we need only mark how the principal departments of the state are bestowed [distributed], and look no farther for the true cause of every mischief that befalls us.

The finances of a nation, sinking under its debts and expenses, are committed to a young nobleman already ruined by play." Introduced

much upon the administration of its government, | event has not been answerable to the design. hat, to be acquainted with the merit of a min- After a rapid succession of changes, we are reistry, we need only observe the condition of the duced tc that change which hardly any change people. If we see them obedient to the laws, can mend Yet there is no extremity of disprosperous in their industry, united at home, and tress which of itself ought to reduce a great narespected abroad, we may reasonably presume tion to despair. It is not the disorder, but the that their affairs are conducted by men of expe- physician; it is not a casual concurrence of ca rience, abilities, and virtue. If, on the contrary, lamitous circumstances, it is the pernicious hand we see a universal spirit of distrust and dissat- of government, which alone can make a whole isfaction, a rapid decay of trade, dissensions in all people desperate. parts of the empire, and a total loss of respect in the eyes of foreign powers, we may pronounce, without hesitation, that the government of that country is weak, distracted, and corrupt. The multitude, in all countries, are patient to a certain point. Ill usage may rouse their indignation, and hurry them into excesses, but the original fault is in government.3 Perhaps there never was an instance of a change in the circumstances and temper of a whole nation, so sudden and extraordinary as that which the mis- of absolute fatuity. The way being thus prepared, conduct of ministers has, within these very few what was first insinuated is now openly expressed years, produced in Great Britain. When our in the next sentence. The word "folly" is applied to the conduct of the King of England in the face of gracious sovereign ascended the throne, we were a flourishing and a contented people. If the per- severe by the gravest irony. Still, there is one rehis subjects, and the application rendered doubly sonal virtues of a king could have insured the lief. Allusion is made to his "unbounded goodness happiness of his subjects, the scene could not of heart," from which, in the preceding chain of inhave altered so entirely as it has done. The sinuations, these errors of judgment had been de idea of uniting all parties, of trying all charac- duced. The next sentence takes this away. It ters, and distributing the offices of state by ro- directly ascribes to the King, with an increased setation, was gracious and benevolent to an ex-verity of ironical denial, some of the meanest pastreme, though it has not yet produced the many sions of royalty, "a capricious partiality for new salutary effects which were intended by it. To faces," a "natural love of low intrigue," "the treacherous amusement of double and triple negotiations!" say nothing of the wisdom of such plan, it unIt is unnecessary to remark on the admirable predoubtedly arose from an unbounded goodness of cision and force of the language in these expres heart, in which folly had no share. It was not sions, and, indeed, throughout the whole passage. a capricious partiality to new faces; it was not There had been just enough in the King's conduct a natural turn for low intrigue, nor was it the for the last seven years to make the people suspect treacherous amusement of double and triple ne-all this, and to weaken or destroy their affection for gotiations. No, sir, it arose from a continued anxiety in the purest of all possible hearts for the general welfare. Unfortunately for us, the

Here is the central idea of the letter-the prop osition to be proved in respect to the King and his ministers. The former part of this paragraph contains the major premise, the remainder the minor down to the last sentence, which brings out the conclusion in emphatic terms. In order to strengthen the minor, which was the most important premise, he rapidly contrasts the condition of England before and after the King ascended the throne. In doing this, he dilates on those errors of the King which led to, and which account for, so remarkable a change. Thus the conclusion is made doubly strong. This union of severe logic with the finest rhetorical skill in filling out the premises and giving them their utmost effect, furnishes an excellent model for the student in oratory.

In this attack on the King, there is a refined artifice, rarely if ever equaled, in leading the mind gradually forward from the slightest possible insinnation to the bitterest irony. First we have the "uniting of all parties," which is proper and desirable; next, "trying all characters," which suggests decidedly a want of judgment; then "distributing the offices of state by rotation," a charge rendered plausible, at least, by the frequent changes of ministers, and involving (if true) a weakness little short

the Crown. It was all connected with that system of favoritism introduced by Lord Bute, which the have made them endure for a moment such an atnation so much abhorred. Nothing but this would tack on their monarch, and especially the absolute mockery with which Junius concludes the whole, by speaking of "the anxiety of the purest of all possible hearts for the general welfare!" His entire Letter to the King, with all the rancor ascribed to it by Burke, does not contain so much bitterness and insult as are concentrated in this single passage. While we can not but condemn its spirit, we are forced to acknowledge that there is in this and many other passages of Junius, a rhetorical skill in the evolution of thought which was never surpassed by Demosthenes.

5 The Duke of Grafton, first Lord of the Treasury. It is unnecessary to remark on the dexterity of connecting with this mention of a treasury, "sinking under its debts and expenses," the idea of its head being a gambler loaded with his own debts, and liable continually to new distresses and temptations from his love of play. The thought is wisely left here. The argument which it implies would be weakened by any attempt to expand it. Junias often reminds us of the great Athenian orator, in thus striking a single blow, and then passing on tc some other subject, as he does here to the apostasy of the Duke of Grafton, his inconsistency, caprice, and irresolution.