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he had met upon the level and confronted in the debates of the day. There is an air of sustained superiority about him which seems innate and instinctive; and his famous letter to the King shows him to have been one who was no stranger to the person and conversation of George the Third-one in whose presence royalty would feel or had felt itself impaired; in fine, aut diabolus aut Gulielmus Pitt.

CHATHAM.-It was therefore the higher intent and duty of the peers to watch over and guard the people; for when the people had lost their rights, the peerage would soon become insignificant. Dr. Robertson, in his Life of Charles V., informs us that the peers of Castile were so far cajoled and seduced by him as to join him in overturning that part of the Cortes which represented the people.

JUNIUS (on the same subject).-Without insisting on the extravagant concessions made to Henry VIII., there are instances in the history of other countries of a formal and deliberate surrender of public liberty into the hands of the sovereign.

CHATHAM.-Let us be cautious how we invade the liberties of our fellow-subjects. The man who has lost his own freedom becomes, from that moment, an instrument in the hands of an ambitious prince to destroy the freedom of others.

In Almon's anecdotes of Lord Chatham will be found a vast number of passages occurring in his Lordship's speeches similar to others which we find in Junius. His Lordship, in his great speech of January 9th, 1770, in the House of Lords, said: "I revere the prerogative of the Crown, and would contend for it as warmly as for the rights of the people. They are linked together and naturally support each other. I would not touch a feather of the prerogative. The expression, perhaps, is too light; but since I have made use of it, let me add JUNIUS. We can never be in real danger that the entire command and power of until the forms of Parliament are made use directing the local disposition of the army is of to destroy the substance of our civil and the royal prerogative-the master-feather in religious liberties-until Parliament itself the eagle's wing; and if I were permitted to betrays its trust by contributing to establish carry the allusion a little farther, I should new principles of government, and employsay they have disarmed the imperial birding the very weapons committed to it by the the ministrum fulminis alitem. The army collective body to stab the Constitution. is the thunder of the Crown; the Ministry have tied up the hand which should direct the bolt."

Junius แ says: Private credit is wealth; public honor is security. The feather that adorns the royal bird supports his flight; strip him of his plumage, and you fix him to the earth."

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CHATHAM (of the American disturbances). -They ought to be treated with tenderness, for they were ebullitions of liberty which broke out upon the skin, and were a sign, if not of a perfect, at least a vigorous constitution, and must not be driven in too suddenly, lest they should strike to the heart." JUNIUS. No man regards an eruption on the surface when the noble parts are invaded, and he feels a mortification approaching the heart.

CHATHAM.-The Americans had purchased their liberty at a dear rate, since they had quitted their country and gone in search of freedom to a desert.

Junius says, "They left their native land in search of freedom, and found her in a desert."

CHATHAM.-It were better for the people to perish in a glorious contention for their rights, than to purchase a slavish tranquillity at the expense of a single iota of these rights.

JUNIUS (to the King).-I confess, sir, I should be content to renounce the form of the Constitution once more, if there were no other way to obtain substantial justice.

CHATHAM (of Mansfield).-No man is better acquainted with his abilities and learning than I am, nor has a greater respect for them than I have.

JUNIUS (to the same).-When I acknowledge your talents, you may believe I am sincere. I feel for human nature when I see a man so gifted as you are descend to such vile practices.

CHATHAM (of the Commons,.in Wilkes's case).-I affirm they have betrayed their constituents and violated the Constitution.

JUNIUS. Let the people determine by their conduct at a future election whether or no it be in reality the general sense of the nation that their rights have been arbitrarily invaded by the present House of Commons, and the Constitution betrayed.

A crowd of other parallel passages, con- | bridge should obstinately refuse to commucerning Wilkes and the Parliament, may be nicate; and even if the fathers of the Church, found by the curious. if Saville, Richmond, Camden, Rockingham and (set down the last!) Chatham should disagree in the ceremonies of their political worship, and even in the interpretation of twenty texts in Magna Charta.

CHATHAM.-If the English freeholders desert their own cause, they deserve to be slaves. My Lords, this is not the cold opinion of my understanding, but the glowing expression of what I feel. It is my heart that speaks; I know I speak warmly.

JUNIUS. The formality of a well-repeated lesson is widely different from the animated expression of the heart. Forgive this passionate language. I am unable to conceal it; it is the language of my heart.

CHATHAM (of Wilkes).-In his person, though he were the worst of men, I contend for the safety and security of the best.

JUNIUS. But let Mr. Wilkes's character be what it may, this is at least certain, that circumstanced as he is, with regard to the public, even his vices plead for him.

CHATHAM.-His Majesty will determine whether he will yield to the united petitions of the people of England, or maintain the House of Commons in the exercise of a legislative power which heretofore abolished the House of Lords and overturned the monarchy.

JUNIUS.-Though perhaps not with the same motive, they, the Parliament, have strictly followed the example of the Long Parliament, which first declared the regal office useless, and soon after, with little ceremony, dissolved the House of Lords. The same pretended power which robs an English subject of his birthright may rob an English King of his crown.

CHATHAM (in the speech of 22d January, on Lord Rockingham's motion).-Rather than the nation should surrender their birthright to a despotic Minister, he hoped, old as he was, to see the question brought to issue and fairly tried between the people and the Government.

JUNIUS.-Every measure of Government opens ample field for parliamentary disquisition. If this resource should fail, our next appeal must be made to Heaven.

CHATHAM.-Magna Charta, the Petition of Rights, the Bill of Rights, form that code which I call the Bible of the English Constitution.

CHATHAM.-The boroughs of the country have been properly enough called the rotten parts of the Constitution. Like the infirmities of the body, we must submit to carry them about with us. The limb is mortified; bnt the amputation might be death.

JUNIUS. As to cutting away the rotten boroughs, I am as much offended as any man at seeing so many of them under the direct influence of the Crown. Yet I honestly confess to you, that I am startled at the idea of so extensive an amputation.

These and a number of other parallel passages have been relied upon by Mr. Taylor to prove that Sir Philip Francis was the author of the Letters; because the latter reported the speeches of Chatham in the House of Lords. But, as Lord Coningsby said in 1715, when Sir Robert Walpole had accused Lord Bolingbroke of high treason" the honorable gentleman accuses the scholar, I the master; he impeaches the hand, I the head," so we turn from the young stenographer to attack the mighty master of British statesmanship-from the cunning hand to the noble head. Nothing like Pitt's oratory can be found in England but the Letters of Junius. Both are very much attached to the plain, powerful idioms of the nation. Chatham had an unerring sense of the fine effect of a vernacular manner. Idiomatic phraseology is usually connected with those efforts of eloquence which are liked and remembered best; and the impassioned earnestness of William Pitt stood in need of the racy vulgate of England. Whenever his blood gets up, he speaks in the barest and plainest figures of common speech. It is the same with Junius, who loves the homeliness of phrase which carries a man's meaning soonest to a popular aim. That tendency to metaphors and resemblances, so common to both, shows a likeness which, we think, cannot be mistaken.

JUNIUS. The civil constitution too, that When Junius's Letters were first publegal liberty, that general creed which every lished, Lord Chatham was certainly susEnglishman professes, may still be supported, pected. Camden, Temple, and George Grenthough Wilkes, Horne, Townsend, Saw-ville knew the secret-perhaps Woodfall

did, also. It is impossible to think Burke did | denunciations of him in 1767; and that not suspect of whom he was speaking, when Junius was, at first, desirous of making a he thought an anonymous writer for the false impression for purposes of secresy and Public Advertiser worthy of an emblazon- safety. Junius is singularly and suspiciously ment in the House of Commons, such as is inconsistent as regards Chatham and Camconveyed in the following very Irish mob of den. This" apostate lawyer" (Pitt's lifemetaphors: "How came this Junius to have long friend, and the executor of his will) broken through the cobwebs of the law, and receives a cordial recognition of his greatness to rage uncontrolled, unpunished through and goodness in Junius's last letter. The the land? The myrmidons of the Court irreverent Wilkes seems to look with revehave been long and are still pursuing him rence upon the veiled eidolon. He says, in vain. They will not spend their time in reply to a private letter from Junius in upon me, or you, or you. No, they disdain 1771: "I do not mean, sir, to indulge the such vermin when the mighty boar of the impertinent curiosity of finding out the most forest that has broken through all their toils important secret of our times-the author is before them. But what will all their of Junius. I will not attempt with profane efforts avail? No sooner has he wounded hands to tear the veil from the sanctuary. one, than he lays another down dead at his I am disposed with the inhabitants of Attica feet. For my part, when I saw his attack to erect an altar to the unknown God o upon the King, I own my blood ran cold. our political idolatry, and will be content to I thought he had ventured too far, and there worship him in clouds and darkness." In was an end to his triumphs. But while I another letter he says: "After the first letter expected in his daring flight his final ruin and of Junius to me, I did not go to Woodfall to fall, behold him rising still higher, and com- pry into a secret I had no right to know. ing down souse upon both houses of Parlia- The letter itself bore the stamp of Jove." ment. Yes, he did make you his quarry, As regards Woodfall, we see that he also and you still bleed from the wounds of his approaches his correspondent with the protalons. In short, after carrying our royal foundest respect. The sagacity of these men eagle in his pounces and dashing him against could not be completely baffled in a case a rock, he laid you prostrate. King, Lords like this; and we hold that, like the man and Commons are but the sport of his fury." betraying the stag to the hunters in Æsop, Horne Tooke also shows that he suspects though they do not speak, they point truly who Junius is. He says: "The darkness in the direction of Junius. in which Junius thinks himself shrouded has not concealed him. Because Lord Chatham has been ill-treated by the King and treacherously betrayed by the Duke of Grafton, the latter is the pillow on which Junius will rest his resentments, and the public are to oppose the measures of Government from mere motives of hostility to the sovereign!" This is almost laying his hand upon Chatham. It was in reply to it that Junius wrote the curious panegyric on Lord Chatham in his fifty-fourth letter. This eulogy has every appearance of a feint, and an uneasy desire to mislead those who came too near identifying him with the gouty old Earl. Like the first invective of Poplicola, this praise is conditional. He who was a black villain and deserved the gibbet, conditionally, is a man around whose monument recorded honors shall gather, conditionally! It will be safely concluded that the man who could write as Junius did in 1771 of Lord Chatham, could not be very sincere in his

Having considered the salient features of the likeness we perceive, we would mention a few apparent objections against it. It is thought Junius must have been somebody in the War Office, because his knowledge of military men and matters is so remarkably minute. But Chatham, who during his own ministry disposed of armaments like figures on a chess-board, and organized victory from his arm-chair, (while Carnot was yet in his first petticoats,) knew the business of the War Office almost as well as the best clerk in it, and could easily learn the current history of it from Francis and others who were bound to him for favors conferred. Junius's assaults on Lord Hillsborough were provoked by the dismissal of Chatham's friend, General Amherst, from his government of Virginia, to give it to Lord Botetourt. Those on Lord Barrington, Secretary of War, are accounted for principally by the fact that Legge, Pitt's Chancellor of the Exchequer, was turned out to make room for him, on

the accession of George the Third. The general military policy of government, which had counteracted his own and displaced many of his friends, would naturally urge Pitt to denounce the mistakes and abuses of the War Department.

Again, the idea of Lord Chatham seems, at first glance, at variance with Junius's interest in the politics and civic doings of the metropolis. But that is a mistake. Whiggery and William Pitt could always boast a strong fortress and defense in London; the citizens of which held the latter in high honor, and gave him several tokens of itone of these being a bridge dedicated to his name and glory, in a document that lies in copperplate at the bottom of the Thames, under what was intended to be Pitt's Bridge, and is now Blackfriar's. And it must be remembered, that to the remonstrance of the city of London, backed by Wilkes, Tooke, Sawbridge and the rest, Chatham looked with solicitude for aid in overthrowing the Tory Ministry in 1770, and reinstating Whiggism in triumph. The disappointment of Junius at the failure of this and other schemes is irritably expressed in his last note to Woodfall.

breathed his last in an effort to hinder the independence of the colonies. An average of Chatham's and Junius's American opinions, respectively, reads alike; showing that the early invectives of the latter on this subject, directed against the Earl, are palpably hollow.

We have already spoken of Chatham's hatred of Bedford. He hated Grafton for his desertion and ingratitude. The Duke had been a worshipper of the Earl, under whom he said he would serve in any capacity;

"Been his sworn soldier, bidding him depend

Upon his stars, his fortune, and his strength;" but, in 1767, had fallen over to Bute and the court foes of the name of Pitt. "If the Duke of Grafton," says Mr. Heron, "had remained faithful to the Earl of Chatham, and scorned all political alliance with the Bedfords as with the King's friends, the union of Pitt and Grenville, the Newcastle and Rockingham Whigs, would have been triumphant, and the King would have surrendered the government to them on their own conditions." Grafton's defection was a grievous disaster; and grievously did Junius avenge it. Chatham's dislike of the King is very intelligible. George entertained a hereditary aversion from William Pitt. The latter, in effect, said in the House of Lords in 1770, that the King had duped him; whereupon Grafton started up with,

It has been said that Chatham and Junius differed with respect to the treatment of the American colonists. But it is plain they only seemed to differ as much as was necessary to keep up the deception and to carry out the desire of Junius, so palpable in all his letters, to be taken for Grenville-"I rise to defend the King!" Wilkes, who to lead the curiosity of the world in the direction of the Grenvilles. Junius, in the first letter, Poplicola's, denounced Chatham for encouraging the recusant Americans; yet afterwards he admits (in the first of the Junius series) that the question of taxation had been revived, which should have been "buried in oblivion." And again in 1771, he says he considers the right of taxing the colonies by an act of the British Legislature, a speculative right merely, "never to be exerted, and never to be renounced." These opinions of Junius seem vacillating or insincere, seeing he had denounced Chatham for something similar. Chatham, too, seemed to hold undecided opinions on the matter. He was at first disposed, with George Grenville, to tax the Americans, if they would quietly permit it. As they would not, he opposed taxation. He next "rejoiced that America had resisted;" and ultimately

suspected to whom he wrote, tells Junius in one of his letters, "The Earl of Chatham told me ten years ago, that [the King] was the falsest hypocrite in Europe." The haughty Earl had sufficient motive to hold in scorn the ignorance, bigotry, and hypocrisy of George the Third; and Junius has interpreted the feeling in a personal manner, which is not to be mistaken. Chatham detested Mansfield as the most subtle, constant, and powerful of his Tory opponents. The estate which Sir W. Pynsent left to William Pitt was litigated, and Lord Mansfield favored the claims of the Pynsent family, against the great Commoner. And such a circumstance as this would naturally embitter the hostility felt by the Earl towards Mansfield, on account of their great political differences.

As regards the conveyancing part of this mystery, Lord Chatham's wealth gave him ample means to insure the safe transit of

convulsions ;" the quick notice taken of Garrick's communication to Mr. Ramus, at Richmond palace, (Peter Pindar's "Billy Ramus,") that Junius would write no more; all these things are naturally accounted for by the residence of Mrs. Anne Pitt in the heart of the royal household. Apropos of David Garrick, the bitter letter which Junius wrote to him shows how much the concealed writer feared his prying inquiries. Chatham would greatly dread the curiosity of this eminent player, seeing that the latter was once on very intimate terms with himself and his family, and would be very likely to make a shrewd guess at the handwriting. He might have recognized Lady Chatham's: he certainly knew his Lordship's; for, several years previously, when Garrick was on a visit to Mount Edgecombe, overlooking Plymouth harbor and the sea, William Pitt wrote to him an invitation to his own place, in some verses which may read curiously in the present connection:

the correspondence with Woodfall. Money gracious sovereign is as callous as a stockconquers the mightiest difficulties. Further- fish to every thing but the reproach of cowmore, and accounting almost conclusively ardice; this alone is able to set the humors for the successful concealment of this extra- afloat, and after a paper of that kind he won't ordinary business, he had amanuenses, at eat meat for a week;" that the King used to least an amanuensis, in his own household. live on potatoes only for several days; the His wife was sister of Richard, Earl Tem- statement that the Duke of Bedford had ple, and George Grenville, a woman of tal-rated him in the closet and "left him in ent and accomplishments. The Rev. Mr. Thackeray, biographer of Lord Chatham, says: "She possessed a very powerful understanding, combined with great feminine delicacy. The ease and spirit with which her ladyship wrote, rendered her letters very delightful to her friends, and enabled her to assist Lord Chatham during his attendance in Parliament or his attacks of the gout, in answering many of his correspondents." Chatham's sister, Mrs. Anne Pitt, a spinster, was just such a woman as her brother was a man. Bolingbroke used to call her Divinity Pitt, naming her brother Sublimity Pitt; and Horace Walpole said she and William were as much alike "as two drops of fire." With such an amanuensis as his wife, and perhaps, occasionally, his sister, the writing, copying, and transmitting his letters would not be the difficult matter which a man differently situated would have found it. And we perceive how the chances of discovery would be excluded by such means. Lady Chatham's feigned hand may well baffle the critical sagacity of all who tried to trace it home. All they could make out was that the writing was like the hand used by ladies at the beginning of the century, with one exception. The letter to the King seemed to have been traced heavily with a pen over pencilled letters. Wilkes said Junius's usual hand resembled that of Lady Chatham's mother, which he had seen. While the character

and abilities of his wife enabled Junius to say, with something near enough perhaps to the truth, under the circumstances, "I am the sole depository of my secret," the accuracy and minuteness of his information of the doings at the palace would cease to be surprising, seeing that Mrs. Anne Pitt was Privy Purse to the King's mother, and as much the centre of English court gossip as Madame Dudevant was of the French. The assurance to Woodfall in 1771 that the Princess Dowager was in the habit of "suckling toads from morning till night" for the cure of a cancer in the breast; that "our

"Leave, Garrick, the rich landscape, proudly gay,
Docks, forts and navies, brightening all the bay;
To my plain roof repair, primeval seat;
Yet there no wonder thy quick eye can meet,
Save should you deem it wonderful to find
A statesman without power and without gall,
Ambition cured and an unpassioned mind.
Hating no courtiers, happier than them all;
Bowed to no yoke, nor crouching for applause,
Votary alone of freedom and the laws.

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Come, then, immortal spirit of the stage,
Great Nature's proxy, glass of every age," &c.

Very different all this from "Now, mark me, vagabond!" But this quotation exhibits the versatility of Pitt's pen. If he had not been a great statesman, he would have been a great literary man.

To return to Junius's court information. What an idea does it not give of the amazing audacity which we assume to have been Chatham's, in laying about him so desperately on the highest people in the realm, with whom he and his family were in the habit of mingling in the daily intercourse of society! He might very well

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