on his retirement from the ministry. The celebrated William Pitt, who had been Chancellor of the Exchequer under Lord Shelburne, held the same office under the Coalition Ministry, and in January 1784, he wisely relieved the Exchequer of Colonel Barré's pension by conferring upon him the sinecure office of Clerk of the Pells, with a salary of £3000 per annum, which had then become vacant by the death of Sir Edward Walpole.

In the new Parliament, which met in May 1784, Colonel Barré sat for Calne. He was incapacitated, however, for public business by a total loss of sight; and he finally retired from Parliament at the general election of 1790. He died at his house in Stanhope Street, May Fair, on the 20th July 1802, in the 76th year of his age, leaving a large part of his fortune to the Marchioness of Townshend!

We have thus endeavoured to give our readers a general view of the life of Colonel Barré, and of the grounds upon which Mr. Britton believes him to have been the author of the unacknowledged Miscellaneous Letters ascribed to Junius, as well as of the genuine productions to which he affixed the shadow of his name. Had Mr. Britton endeavoured to identify Barré with the author of the Letters signed Junius and Philo-Junius, he might have made out a case more rational, and more likely to be received than many of those which have been submitted to the public; but when he tries to identify him with Lucius, Atticus, Poplicola, Domitian, and many others, the slanderers of Chatham, and Shelburne, and Townshend, with two of whom he lived on the most affectionate and friendly terms, and to whom he owed all his success in life, he fixes the brand of villany upon the brow of his hero, and converts the honest Junius into a public slanderer, without political principles, without consistency of character, and prepared to reprobate to-morrow the man who was to-day his idol. We shall relieve Mr. Britton, however, of the millstone of the Miscellaneous Letters, and consider his hypothesis in relation only to the genuine Letters of Junius. We thus deprive him, no doubt, of some of the points of identity which the Miscellaneous Letters supply between the Letter to a Brigadier-General and the productions of Junius; but as we grant him the truth of this hypothesis, and render it unnecessary that Barré should have witnessed in Paris the public burning of the books of the Jesuits, and that he should have been the slanderer of Lord Townshend, to "whom he was a frequent visitor" in the decline of life, we place him in a more favourable position than his own.

We think it will be admitted by all disinterested judges, that independent even of the actual declaration of the Marquis of

Barre's Talents not equal to those of Junius.

115

Lansdowne, Junius stood in a peculiar relation to the person, the politics, and the interests of that distinguished and patriotic nobleman. Nothing is more probable than that Barré, as his particular friend and constant companion and political supporter, should have been Junius; but it is equally probable that the private secretary, or the under secretary, or any other political friend of his Lordship, should have been Junius. With regard to Barré, Mr. Britton has not shown, and cannot show, that he possessed the knowledge, the talents, the powers of composition, and, above all, the genuine wit and sarcastic humour which characterize the productions of Junius. There is a species of boldness and vigour, and coarseness in his speeches, but they are otherwise tame and pointless, and his Letters to Lord Chatham have the same character. We think it clear that Junius was not a public orator, or a person who had the faculty of public speaking. To think and speak on his legs, as Lord Brougham defines the art of making an extempore speech, compels the orator to seize the slightest associations. His sentences are long, involved, and parenthetic; and if he ever had the power of sententious and antithetical writing, of constructing symmetrical and well-balanced periods, and of writing with logical accuracy, he necessarily loses it after he has acquired a facility of composing upon his legs. Had we space we could establish this truth by a reference to the productions of our most distinguished orators. Barré, therefore, though he had the position, and the political knowledge, and access to the secret information which Junius must have possessed, possessed neither his brilliant talents nor his powers of composition, nor the smallest trace of his Attic wit and his sarcastic humour. We cheerfully concede to Mr. Britton that Barré, had he possessed the necessary intellectual power, was in a position to have written the Letter to a Brigadier-General, and therefore to have had a high claim to the honours of Junius. But he may have been merely the friend who communicated to the true author the information that was required, or as Lord Albemarle was supposed to be, he may have been the patron who stimulated or encouraged him. But even if all these objections were groundless, it would be a difficult task to persuade the public that Junius held lucrative offices in the State, while he was systematically assailing the King and the Government, and that he who denounced the appointment and the pension given to Sir W. Draper should have been a sinecurist when Junius, and should have spent his latest years as a pensioner on the Civil List.

It has been almost universally admitted that Junius was, and should have been, an Irishman. Barré possessed this title to be Junius, but he wanted another still more essential, and without:

which no candidate, however brilliant his talents, and however appropriate his position, can be admitted as a competitor. Junius hated Scotland and the Scotch. He availed himself of every opportunity of abusing them; and we must therefore discover some solid grounds why the representative of so noble and distinguished a writer took such an unfavourable view of a nation which has gained the esteem of statesmen, and whose people, in point of education and moral and religious training, occupy a most exalted place among the nations of Europe. Colonel Barré, certainly in so far as his history can show, had no reasons for hating the Scotch and abusing Scotland, and nothing has surprised us more than the following observations on the subject from the pen of Mr. Britton :

"His residence in Scotland for three years may have induced that prejudice against the Scotch character which is palpably marked in the Letters of Junius. Johnson was equally inimical to the Scotch after a cursory view of them and their homes. Barré, as an Irishman of ardent and enthusiastic temperament, who had mixed in various society, and lived an active life, must have felt a great contrast between himself and the cold and calculating conduct of Scotchmen."-P. 21.

It will be difficult to explain this remarkable sentence, and still more to show how a patriot and a generous soldier like Barré, who had seen much of men and much of the world, could observe a "cold and calculating conduct" in our countrymen. Was it at the hospitable board at which he and his brother-officers must have been courteously entertained? Was it among the sober and religious population of the Lowlands-provident, peaceable, and loyal? Was it in its academic groves, then trodden by so many distinguished men? Was it in the halls of its nobles, among the emblems of a glorious lineage and the realities of living beauty? Or was Or was it among the green mounds which deck the purple heath of Culloden-the resting-place of warriors, faithful to their chieftains and to their Prince-that the English soldier discovered those revolting features of our national character which disturbed him in his youth, and haunted him through life? Or could it be when Colonel Barré was governor of Stirling Castle, and gazed over the field of Bannockburn, the Marathon of the North, where the flower of English chivalry fell, and "the proud usurper was laid low?" No-Barré learned no such lessons in Scotland. He never abused the Scotch, and never wielded the spear of Junius.

There is one other objection to the hypothesis of Mr. Britton, which it will be very difficult to remove. Why did Barré, were he Junius, cease to write in January 1772? He was then in perfect health; he retained his seat in the House of Commons; he was then the friend and correspondent of Shelburne and

Why did Barré, if Junius, cease to write?

117 Chatham; he received no bribe from the Government; he continued to maintain the same principles, and was associated with the same political friends. In his last private letter to Woodfall, dated January 19, 1773, Junius assures him that he had good reason for discontinuing his communications.—“ In the present state of things, if I were to write again I must be as silly as any of the horned cattle that run mad through the city, or as any of your wise aldermen. I meant the cause and the public. Both are given up. I feel for the honour of this country when I see that there are not ten men in it who will unite and stand together upon any one question. But it is all alike, vile and contemptible." In his Dedication to the English Nation, however, which he sent to Wilkes on the 3d November, 1771, he gives utterance to sentiments of a very different kind: :- "You are roused," says he, " at last, to a sense of your danger. The remedy will soon be in your power. If Junius lives you shall often be reminded of it." Junius, if he has ever been named, did live, but did not fulfil his pledge. Barré lived, and lived under circumstances which might well have called him into the field. In a letter, written two days after Junius abandons "the cause and the public," Barré announces to Lord Chatham,* that the honours of his profession have been withheld from him, though the Secretary at War had, " in a private and unsought for conversation," promised him promotion in his turn, and that he was thus an object of persecution, and would quit the army if he were "not reinstated according to seniority of rank, and the rightful pretensions of service." Having, in conformity with Lord Chatham's advice, transmitted a memorial to the king, his majesty rejected his petition, and gave him permission to retire from the service.† Had Junius been Barré this act of persecution might have summoned him again into the field, or he might have listened to the importunate call of Sindercombe, a writer in the Public Advertiser, who, on the 26th December, 1770, implored him to fulfil the promise in his Dedication, and especially the pledge which he had long since given, "that the corrupt administration of Lord Townshend in Ireland'shall not be lost to the public." Junius remained deaf

*Correspondence, vol. iv. p. 242, dated January 21, 1773.

† Lord Shelburne, in a letter to Lord Chatham, dated February 27, 1773, thus notices the retirement of Colonel Barré :-" Your lordship has been informed of what has passed relative to Colonel, now Mr. Barré. Lord Barrington, after an interval of eight days more, signified the king's acceptance of his resignation, since which Lord North and the Bedfords have avowed separately and without reserve their disapprobation of the measure which occasioned the step. This leaves no doubt from what quarter the measure comes. It is but just to apprise your lordship what proscribed people you honour sometimes with your correspondence."Chatham's Correspondence, vol. iv. p. 253.

to these calls. He had truly abandoned the "cause and the public," and we have no doubt that he was influenced by motives which no patriot could avow, and which prompted him to preserve his name from the reprobation of posterity.

Although we cannot concur in the hypothesis of Mr. Britton, we are bound to thank him for the interesting information which he has collected regarding the life and character of Colonel Barré. Every attempt to identify Junius with one of his contemporaries should be received with gratitude, and whether it signally fails, or is favourably received, it cannot but throw some light upon the problem, or remove some difficulty from its solution. But independently of its intrinsic value, Mr. Britton's work has been the cause of placing the controversy upon a new foundation. An able writer in the Athenæum, as we have already seen, has, in a notice of that work, assigned the most satisfactory reasons for rejecting the great mass of the Miscellaneous Letters ascribed to Junius, and even the few which he does admit as appearing to be genuine, he admits with a caution which will justify the rejection of them on any question which concerns either the personal character or the identity of Junius.

*

"A letter by Domitian," says the writer in the Athenæum, “is said to be referred to by Junius in a private note of the 7th of December 1770; and coupled with other circumstances-amongst these his private note of the 22d Feburary 1772, the evidence appears sufficient. Let 'Domitian,' therefore, be received as Junius. 'Testiculus' may also be allowed on the inconclusive memorandum, on private note, and date of publication, and if so, 'Testis' claims protection. Two short notes by 'Vindex' may be received on like authority.”—P. 747.

After an able exposure of the temerity of Dr. Mason Good, the editor of the edition of Junius which contains the Miscellaneous Letters, the writer in the Athenæum justly and indignantly remarks,

"We hope, therefore, never again to hear the character of Junius traduced and calumniated on the strength of the letters which Good has been pleased to attribute to him. These have been added for the most part, as we have shown, without authority and without probability-and sometimes in direct defiance of facts, and they have left us a Junius who is a moral monster, by whom we can prove anything."

The character of Junius having been thus restored, and the field of controversy cleared of the gigantic stumbling-blocks which covered it, we shall now proceed to inquire into the claims of three competitors who have very recently been recommended

* Athenæum, July 1848, pp. 711 and 745.