From the North British Review. AUTHORSHIP OF JUNIUS ELUCIDATED. The Authorship of the Letters of Junius Elucidated, including a Biographical Memoir of Lieutenant-Colonel Isaac Barré, M.P. BY JOHN BRITTON, F.S.A. London: 1848. STAT NOMINIS UMBRA * must still be the inscription upon the intellectual mausoleum of Junius. Eighty suns have revolved since this political Meteor burst upon our horizon. Under the censure of Junius the sovereign trembled on his throne;-the corrupt statesman crouched beneath his rod ;-the pliant judge smarted under his rebuke;-the fawning courtier writhed under the agony of his lash;—and the Lords and Commons of England were at once the sport of his wit, and the victims of his wrath. Regarding as inseparable the private character and the political acts of public men, and viewing the immorality of the Court as the fountain of social corruption, he dragged into public view the licentiousness of public men, and thus subjected himself to the imputation of writing under the excitement of personal feeling, and of assuming the mask of a political moralist, in order to aim a shaft at the heart of an enemy, or strike a blow at the character of a friend. It is easy to understand how Junius has been charged with "falsehood and malice" by those whose private character he unveiled, or who were stung with the sharpness of his wit, or smarted under the asperity of his satire; but these charges have never been substantiated; and when we study the disclosures which time is continually drawing forth from the epistolary stores of the past, we have no hesitation in hazarding the opinion, that Junius may yet be proved to have neither magnified the corruptions of the Government which he denounced, nor malignantly calumniated the officials who composed it. It may be, and has been, a question how far, in the discussion of public measures, we are entitled to pry into the character, and * The shadow of his name survives. In sea | emblazon the vices of public men. Such a patriot and moralist was Junius. The flash of his mental eye scathed as with a lightning-stroke the minions of corruption, and men paused in their career of political mischief in order to avoid the fate of his victims. Envenomed with wit and winged with sarcasm, his shafts carried dismay into the ranks of his adversaries, and they struck deeper into their prey in proportion to the polish with which they had been elaborated. And when he failed to annoy and dislodge his antagonist by the light troops of his wit and ridicule, he brought up in reserve the heavy artillery of a powerful and commanding eloquence. In thus discharging the duties of a public censor and in defending, at the risk of his life, the laws and constitution of his country, we may admire the courage of Junius, and even proffer to him our gratitude, though we disown his political principles and disapprove of his conduct. As the enemy of public corruption and the assertor of public rights, every succeeding age will do homage to his intrepidity and success; and if during the prosecution of a lofty purpose he occasionally forgot in the heat of controversy the courtesies of polished life, the patriot will but shed a tear over human frailty, and fix his eye on the great truths which may have been established, or the important vietory which has been achieved. In the moral and in the physical world the forces which are called into action must obey the laws from which they originate. The solar ray may occasionally consume when its purpose is but to illuminate, and the tornado which is sent to purify our atmosphere bears in its bosom the elements of death and desolation. In social life the intellectual powers must often perform their functions under the high pressure of the passions and affections; and even when most nobly and generously exercised, they may display the temperature of the one and the taint of the other. The good done by Junius has lived after him, let the evil be interred with his bones. Although the scenes in which Junius played so conspicuous a part have been, to a certain extent, cast into the shade by the wars and revolutions of modern times, yet the public anxiety to give life to his shade has not abated; and were we to judge by the number of the works which have been published for the purpose of identifying him with some eminent statesman,* we should draw the inference that the political changes which convulse the age in which we live have but created a more ardent desire to discover the name of a writer who in "thoughts that breathed and words that burned" defended the inalienable rights of Englishmen, while he warned them against any revolutionary inroads upon the constitution by which these rights were secured. In attempting to substantiate the charges of malignity and personality which have been brought against Junius, his accusers have availed themselves of most unjust and unpardonable assumptions. He is supposed to have written a number of other letters bearing various signatures, and containing virulent attacks upon public men to whom, in his acknowledged compositions, he had avowed the deepest attachment. He is thus arraigned as the warm friend and the bitter enemy of Lord Chatham, and he is made to occupy the odious position of the worshipper and the slanderer of Lord Shelburne. The accusers of Junius, too, presuming that they have identified him with some contemporary statesman, charge him-and justly charge him, if their hypothesis be true-with attacking those with whom he lived on the most intimate terms, and to whom he was under the greatest obligations.* If Sir Philip Francis was the author of these letters, as some of Junius' accusers believe, we admit at once the truth of the charge. He who assails with intemperate abuse the Government of his country while he is eating its bread and doing its work-who exposes the immoralities and sullies the honor of a noble family while he shares their confidence and enjoys their hos pitality-and he who slanders his benefactor and aims his deadliest shaft at the patron who placed him in office-deserves to be made an outlaw from social life, and stigmatized as the basest of mankind. But Sir Philip Francis was not guilty of being Junius, and Junius was not Sir Philip Francis-not a clerk in the War Office, and the slanderer of Lord Barrington, not the protégé and the calumniator of Mr. Welbore Ellis, (Lord Mendip,) not the guest and the spy at the Duke of Bedford's table. Junius was neither ATTICUS, nor LUCIUS, nor BRUTUS, nor DOMITIAN. These personages must occupy their own niche in the temple of fame; the reputation of Junius requires no supplement from theirs, and the name of Junius shall not be sullied either by their errors or their crimes. *Lord Brougham's Historical Sketches, &c., pp. 115, 116. which have been ascribed to public men, as grave examples of "virulent abuse," "envious malignity," "rash accusation," and even "ferocious personality," as are to be found in the genuine, or even in the spurious pages of that immortal author. In an age more religious than his, and when the courtesies of society are better known and more widely practised, and under Governments whose functionaries were men of high character, and where corruption was the exception, and not, as it then was, the rule, party spirit has borne the same bitter and noxious fruit; and whatever be our progress in refinement and civili dialectics of political strife all the malice and asperity and personality which have been associated with the name of Junius. Regarding Junius, aloof from his contemporaries, and unidentified with any brilliant name, let us view him as a shadow hovering above the mighty obelisk which has been reared to his genius-as England's Shakspeare in prose-and let us consider what may have been his probable position in the conflict which he waged, and what palliation that position may offer for the ardor of his temperament and the severity of his judgments. Let us suppose him holding office under Lord Shelburne-deprived of that office by a change of ministry-unconnected by ties of gratitude or affection with most of the public characters of the day--prompt-zation, we shall have to deplore in the ed and aided by the chiefs of his party obtaining his materials, sometimes correct, sometimes exaggerated, and sometimes false,* through the same party channels, and without the power, as an anonymous writer, of inquiring into their truth-daring through the press to stem the tide of political corruption, to stifle in their birth the schemes of ministerial intrigue-to protect the public journalist from malicious prosecutions-to expose private vices when united with the power of doing mischief to the community, and even to remonstrate with the sovereign against the folly and treachery of his servants.t Supposing this to have been the position which Junius held, and these the functions which he fearlessly, and often successfully, exercised, his moral portrait displays a nobler phase than if it bore the autograph of Burke, or of Barré, of Francis, or of Sackville. But even if Junius were identified with some contemporaneous politician, whether a peer of the realm, or a clerk in the War Office, we venture to say that we could point out in the speeches and writings of living statesmen, and in the anonymous essays aud reviews On the testimony of Dr. Musgrave, for example, it had been generally believed, and therefore asserted by Junius, that the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Bute had concluded the peace of Paris Such are the general views under which we shall now proceed to the subject of the identification of Junius; but as many of our readers are but imperfectly acquainted with the circumstances under which his letters were composed and published, we must, for their benefit, make a few preliminary observations. The genuine letters of Junius, seventy-one in number, including two to Lord Chatham, which have been only recently published,* were written between the 2d January, 1768, and the 21st January, 1772. They first appeared in the Public Advertiser, conducted by H. S. Woodfall. They were afterwards collected into a volume by their author, and dedicated, in an eloquent address, to the English Nation. Duke of Grafton was at the head of the The Tory administration, which was then in power. Lord North was Chancellor of the Exchequer; Lord Mansfield, Lord ChiefJustice; Lord Weymouth and the Earl of Hillsborough, Secretaries of State; The Marquis of Granby, Commander-in-Chief; and Viscount Townshend, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. The letters of Junius, when not addressed to the editor of the Public Advertiser, were addressed chiefly to the three own day, analogous charges have been made first of these distinguished statesmen; and against ministers, not anonymously, but even in the as Junius was a moderate Whig, with scarceHouse of Commons, and in their own hearing. Only any leaning to democratic principles, he the other hand, in order to make out a charge of falsehood against Junius, it has been alleged that Lord Mansfield did not, as alleged by Junius, drink the health of the Pretender on his knees. But it is positively asserted," that Lord Ravensworth, in 1753, before the Privy Council, convicted Lord Mansfield under the influence of a bribe from France. In our of that offence.' In his celebrated expostulation with the king, while Junius expressed it as the first wish of his heart," that the people may be free," he as sincerely avowed it to be the second, that his majesty "might long continue king of a free people." was the admirer and supporter of Lord Shelburne and Lord Chatham, while he denounced the measures of the Grafton administration, and exerted all his influence to damage it in public opinion, and restore Lord Shelburne to power. At the commencement of these dicussions, a controversy *Chatham's Correspondence, vol. iii. p. 305, and iv. p. 190. arose between Junius and Sir William Draper, which occupies six letters; and about two and a half years afterwards, another controversy sprung up between Junius and the Rev. Mr. Horne, which occupies five let ters, all of which are written with a spirit and talent which have been universally admired. After the publication of his first public letter on the 21st of January, 1769, which contained a general review of the character and conduct of the ministry, and after the termination of the sharp controversy with Sir William Draper, the fame and popularity of Junius were established. The poignancy of his wit and satire, the splendor of his diction, the logic of his argument, and the power of his eloquence confounded the ministry, and inspired the opposition with new energy and zeal. The anxiety of the public, the hatred of his enemies, and even the admiration of his friends, were combined in the attempt to remove his mask, and discover his retreat. Spies of all shades were employed in this secret service, and even David Garrick seems to have undertaken the task of detecting him. Junius, however, obtained intelligence of their schemes, and by his own skill and caution, coupled with the honesty of Woodfall, he baffled every attempt to unveil him. When his Letters to the Duke of Grafton and the Duke of Bedford were published, new motives for his detection presented themselves, but when his celebrated Letter to the King appeared, bold beyond all precedent, and eloquent above all eloquence, a new spirit was awakened against Junius, which rendered it necessary for his personal safety to persist in the concealment of his name. Upon this "mighty boar of the forest" Burke, who gave him this name, pronounced a splendid eulogy, and while he denounced the severity of his censure, he admitted that in the Letter to the King, there were "many bold truths by which a wise prince might profit." "It was the rancor and venom," he continues, “with which I was struck. In these respects the North Briton is as much inferior to him as in strength, wit, and judgment. | But while I expected in this daring flight his final ruin and fall, behold him rising still higher, and coming down souse upon both houses of Parliament. Yes, he did make you his quarry, and you still bleed from the wounds of his talons. You crouch, and still crouch, beneath his rage, nor has he dreaded the terrors of your brow,* sir. * The Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir | He has attacked even you-he has—and I believe you have no reason to triumph in the encounter. In short, after carrying away our Royal Eagle in his pounces, and dashing him against a rock, he has laid you prostrate. King, Lords, and Commons, are but the sport of his fury. Were he a member of this House, what might not be expected from his knowledge, his firmness, and his integrity? He would be easily known by his contempt of all danger, by his penetration, by his vigor. Nothing would escape his vigilance and activity. Bad ministers could conceal nothing from his sagacity, nor could promises or threats induce him to conceal anything from the public." Even Lord North, who was now Prime Minister, and to whom Junius had addressed his fortieth letter on the appointment of Colonel Luttrel, deplored the popularity of Junius, and looked forward to his detection and punishment. "Why, therefore," says he, "should we wonder that the great boar of the wood, this mighty Junius, has broke through the toils, and foiled the hunter? Though there may be at present no spear that will reach him, yet he may be some time or other caught. At any rate he will be exhausted with fruitless efforts; those tusks which he has been whetting to wound and gnaw the constitution, will be worn out. Truth will at last prevail." Having abandoned the hope of discovering Junius, the Government wreaked their vengeance on Woodfall, the printer, by prosecuting him for a libel upon the king. The jury, however, notwithstanding the unconstitutional charge to them by Lord ChiefJustice Mansfield, that they should find a verdict of "guilty or not guilty," brought in a verdict of "printing and publishing ONLY," which defeated the designs of the Government, and gave a new triumph to Junius and the Opposition. The anxiety to discover Junius now became more eager than ever. So high were his Letters in public estimation that Burke was suspected to be their author. Lord Mansfield, Sir William Blackstone, and Sir William Draper, adopted this opinion. Mrs. Burke once admitted that her husband knew the author, and Sir Joshua Reynolds and Mr. Malone believed that though Burke did not write them, "he polished and finished them for the public eye." Dr. Johnson believed Burke to be Junius, 66 because he Fletcher Norton, 64 was distinguished by a pair of large black eyebrows."—Prior's Life of Burke, vol. i. knew no man but Burke who was capable of | It would be an unprofitable task, if not at writing them;" but Burke "spontaneously present an impracticable one, to give even denied it" to Johnson himself. Two pamph- the shortest analysis of the arguments which lets have been written to prove the identity of have been employed in favor of the different Burke and Junius, and Mr. Prior, in his re- candidates for the honor of being Junius. cent life of him, has made an elaborate at Our proper business at present is to lay betempt to confirm this opinion; but his argu- fore our readers some account of Mr. Britments are utterly futile, and prove only what ton's new work, in which he attempts to is now almost universally believed, that Ju- identify with Junius the celebrated Colonel nius was an Irishman.* Isaac Barré. After doing this, we shall review what have been regarded the superior pretensions of Sir Philip Francis and Lord George Sackville, and also those of Colonel Lachlan Macleane, which in our opinion have a still stronger claim upon public notice. After Burke's indignant and spontaneous denial that he was Junius, Sir William Draper and others expressed their conviction that Lord George Sackville was the man, and an elaborate work of nearly 400 pages has been published by Mr. Coventry, in order to confer upon him this honor. That Lord George Sackville had many and peculiar reasons for denouncing, with all the severity of Junius, the administration of the Duke of Grafton and its individual members, will be readily granted, but no arguments have been adduced to prove that he possessed those lofty acquirements, and that power of composition, which must be demanded from every competitor. Mr. Coventry has given twenty-four criteria or testimonials, as he calls them, which must be produced in favor of the true Junius, and by adopting the spurious letters as genuine, he finds no difficulty in producing them all on the part of his favorite; but we have no hesitation in asserting now, what we shall by and by prove, that his book is as devoid of argument as his hypothesis is of probability. Many other competitors for the fame of Junius have been presented for public acceptance, and volumes written to establish their claims. Some have even grasped at the high honor of being Junius, while others have imitated his style, and used his expressions, and adopted his sentiments, in order to have some distant chance of bearing his name. * Prior's Life of Burke, vol. i. p. 186. In an address to the public, which Lord George Sackville printed previous to his trial in 1760, he says—“I had rather upon this occasion submit myself to all the inconveniences that may arise from the want of style, than borrow assistance from the pen of others, as I can have no hopes of establishing my character but from the force of truth." The following is a list of the persons who have been named either by themselves or others as the authors of Junius' Letters: W. H. Cavendish Bentinck, (Duke of Portland,) the Earl of Chatham, the Earl of Chesterfield, Horace Walpole, (Earl of Orford,) Lord George Sackville, Edmund Burke, Dr. Gilbert Stewart, Hugh Macauley Boyd, Counsellor Dunning, (Lord Ashburton,) Richard Glover, (author of Leonidas,) W. G. Hamilton, (Single Speech Hamilton,) Sir William Jones, General Lee, (an Ameri The object of Mr. Britton's work is thus described by himself :— "For the last twelve months I have sought by extensive reading, inquiry, and correspondence, result is that the materials I have accumulated, to obtain authentic satisfactory evidence, and the whilst they serve to elucidate the political and private character and talents of the anonymous AUTHOR of the LETTERS--Lieutenant-Colonel BARRE, also point out and implicate his intimate associates, LORD SHELBURNE and Mr. Dunning. There are likewise some extraordinary revelations respecting William Greatrakes, whose career in life, and the circumstances attending his death, with the disposal of his property, abound in mystery, and are pregnant with suspicion. The story of this gentleman is a romance of real life, and like that of the concealed author is enveloped in a cloak of ambiguity and darkness; yet it is confidently believed that he was the amanuensis to Colonel Barré, and also his confidential agent and messenger. To identify these persons and explain their connection with the public correspondence referred to, to bring out facts of dates and deeds from the dark and intricate recesses in which they were studiously and cunningly concealed, to reconcile and account for contradictions and inconsistencies, have occasioned more anxiety, toil, and scrupulous analysis than can possibly be imagined by any person who has never attempted a similar task. The issue and effects, however, are now submitted to that public tribunal which invariably awards a proper and a just decision, and which I feel assured will ultimately pronounce an impartial verdict, whether favorable PREFACE, p. vi. or adverse to the author's hopes and opinions.". It has always been believed that Lord can,) John Wilkes, John Horne Tooke, Charles Lloyd, secretary to Mr. George Grenville, Henry Flood, M.P., Rev. Philip Rosenhagen, William Greatrakes, John Roberts, originally a treasury clerk, M. De Lolme, Dr. Wilmot, Samuel Dyer, (a literary character, and a friend of Dr. Johnson and Edmund Burke,) Edward Gibbon, Thomas Hollis, Dr. Butler, (Bishop of Hereford,) Sir Philip Francis, Colonel Barré, and Colonel Lachlan Macleane. |