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reigned over the whole region.

The Carnatic is a country not much inferior in extent to England. Figure to yourself, Mr Speaker, the land in whose representative chair you sit; figure to yourself the form and fashion of your sweet and cheerful country from Thames to Trent, north and south, and from the Irish to the German sea east and west, emptied and embowelled (may God avert the omen of our crimes!) by so accomplished a desolation!

[The Difference Between Mr Burke and the
Duke of Bedford.]

[The Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale attacked Mr Burke and his pension in their place in the House of Lords, and Burke replied in his Letters to a Noble Lord,' one of the most sarcastic and most able of all his productions.]

I was not, like his Grace of Bedford, swaddled, and rocked, and dandled into a legislator-Nitor in adversum is the motto for a man like me. I possessed not one of the qualities, nor cultivated one of the arts, that recommend men to the favour and protection of the great. I was not made for a minion or a tool. As little did I follow the trade of winning the hearts by imposing on the understandings of the people. At every step of my progress in life (for in every step was I traversed and opposed), and at every turnpike I met I was obliged to show my passport, and again and again to prove my sole title to the honour of being useful to my country, by a proof that I was not wholly unacquainted with its laws, and the whole system of its interests both abroad and at home. Otherwise, no rank, no toleration even for me. I had no arts but manly arts. On them I have stood, and, please God, in spite of the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale, to the last gasp will I stand.

* *

I know not how it has happened, but it really seems that, whilst his Grace was meditating his well-considered censure upon me, he fell into a sort of sleep. Homer nods, and the Duke of Bedford may dream; and as dreams (even his golden dreams) are apt to be ill-pieced and incongruously put together, his Grace preserved his idea of reproach to me, but took the subject-matter from the crown-grants to his own family. This is the stuff of which his dreams are made.' In that way of putting things together, his Grace is perfectly in the right. The grants to the house of Russel were so enormous, as not only to outrage economy, but even to stagger credibility. The Duke of Bedford is the leviathan among all the creatures of the crown. He tumbles about his unwieldy bulk; he plays and frolics in the ocean of the royal bounty. Huge as he is, and whilst he lies floating many a rood,' he is still a creature. His ribs, his fins, his whalebone, his blubber, the very spiracles through which he spouts a torrent of brine against his origin, and covers me all over with the spray-everything of him and about him is from the throne.

Is it for him to question the dispensation of the royal favour?

I really am at a loss to draw any sort of parallel between the public merits of his Grace, by which he justifies the grants he holds, and these services of mine, on the favourable construction of which I have obtained what his Grace so much disapproves. In private life, I have not at all the honour of acquaintance with the noble duke. But I ought to presume, and it costs me nothing to do so, that he abundantly deserves the esteem and love of all who live with him. But as to public service, why, truly, it would not be more ridiculous for me to compare myself in rank, in fortune, in splendid descent, in youth, strength, or figure, with the Duke of Bedford, than to make a parallel between his services and my attempts to be useful to my country. It would not be gross adulation, but uncivil irony, to say that he has any public

merit of his own, to keep alive the idea of the services by which his vast landed pensions were obtained. My merits, whatever they are, are original and personal; his are derivative. It is his ancestor, the original pensioner, that has laid up this inexhaustible fund of merit, which makes his Grace so very delicate and exceptious about the merit of all other grantees of the crown. Had he permitted me to remain in quiet, I should have said, 'tis his estate; that's enough. It is his by law; what have I to do with it or its history? He would naturally have said on his side, 'tis this man's fortune. He is as good now as my ancestor was two hundred and fifty years ago. I am a young man with very old pensions; he is an old man with very young pensions-that's all.

*

Why will his Grace, by attacking me, force me reluctantly to compare my little merit with that which obtained from the crown those prodigies of profuse donation by which he tramples on the mediocrity of humble and laborious individuals! * Since the new grantees have war made on them by the old, and that the word of the sovereign is not to be taken, let us turn our eyes to history, in which great men have always a pleasure in contemplating the heroic origin of their house.

The first peer of the name, the first purchaser of the grants, was a Mr Russel, a person of an ancient gentleman's family, raised by being a minion of Henry VIII. As there generally is some resemblance of character to create these relations, the favourite was in all likelihood much such another as his master. The first of these immoderate grants was not taken from the ancient demesne of the crown, but from the recent confiscation of the ancient nobility of the land. The lion having sucked the blood of his prey, threw the offal carcass to the jackal in waiting. Having tasted once the food of confiscation, the favourites became fierce and ravenous. This worthy favourite's first grant was from the lay nobility. The second, infinitely improving on the enormity of the first, was from the plunder of the church. In truth, his Grace is somewhat excusable for his dislike to a grant like mine, not only in its quantity, but in its kind so different from his own.

Mine was from a mild and benevolent sovereign; his from Henry VIII. Mine had not its fund in the murder of any innocent person of illustrious rank, or in the pillage of any body of unoffending men; his grants were from the aggregate and consolidated funds of judgments iniquitously legal, and from possessions voluntarily surrendered y the lawful proprietors with the gibbet at their door.

The merit of the grantee whom he derives from, was that of being a prompt and greedy instrument of a levelling tyrant, who oppressed all descriptions of his people, but who fell with particular fury on everything that was great and noble. Mine has been in endeavouring to screen every man, in every class, from oppression, and particularly in defending the high and eminent, who in the bad times of confiscating princes, confiscating chief governors, or confiscating dema gogues, are the most exposed to jealousy, avarice, and envy.

The merit of the original grantee of his Grace's pensions was in giving his hand to the work, and partaking the spoil with a prince, who plundered a part of the national church of his time and country. Mine was in defending the whole of the national church of my own time and my own country, and the whole of the national churches of all countries, from the principles and the examples which lead to ecclesiastical pillage, thence to a contempt of all prescriptive titles, thence to the pillage of all property, and thence to universal desolation.

The merit of the origin of his Grace's fortune was in being a favourite and chief adviser to a prince who

left no liberty to his native country. My endeavour was to obtain liberty for the municipal country in which I was born, and for all descriptions and denominations in it. Mine was to support, with unrelaxing vigilance, every right, every privilege, every franchise, in this my adopted, my dearer and more comprehensive country; and not only to preserve those rights in this chief seat of empire, but in every nation, in every land, in every climate, language, and religion in the vast domain that still is under the protection, and the larger that was once under the protection, of the British crown.

elaborated, and more highly polished, than any of his previous communications. They attacked all the public characters of the day connected with the government, they retailed much private scandal and personal history, and did not spare even royalty itself. The compression, point, and brilliancy of their language, their unrivalled sarcasm, boldness, and tremendous invective, at once arrested the attention of the public. Every effort that could be devised by the government, or prompted by private indignation, was made to discover their author, but in vain. It is not in the nature of things,' he writes His founder's merits were by arts in which he served to his publisher, that you or anybody else should his master and made his fortune, to bring poverty, know me, unless I make myself known: all arts or wretchedness, and depopulation on his country. Mine inquiries or rewards would be ineffectual.' In anwere under a benevolent prince, in promoting the other place he remarks, I am the sole depository commerce, manufactures, and agriculture of his king-of my secret, and it shall die with me.' The even dom; in which his majesty shows an eminent exam- has verified the prediction: he had drawn around ple, who even in his amusements is a patriot, and in himself so impenetrable a veil of secrecy, that all hours of leisure an improver of his native soil. the efforts of inquirers, political and literary, failed in dispelling the original darkness. The letters were published at intervals from 1769 to 1772, when they were collected by Woodfall and revised by their author (who was equally unknown to his publisher), and printed in two volumes. They have since gone through innumerable editions; but the best is that published in 1812 by Woodfall's son, which includes the letters by the same writer under other signatures, with his private notes to his publisher, and fac-similes of his handwriting.

[Character of Howard the Philanthropist.]

I cannot name this gentleman without remarking, that his labours and writings have done much to open the eyes and hearts of all mankind. He has visited all Europe not to survey the sumptuousness of palaces, or the stateliness of temples; not to make accurate measurements of the remains of ancient grandeur, nor to form a scale of the curiosities of modern art; nor to collect medals, or collate manuscripts, but to dive into the depths of dungeons, to plunge into the infection of hospitals, to survey the mansions of sorrow and pain; to take the gauge and dimensions of misery, depression, and contempt; to remember the forgotten, to attend to the neglected, to visit the forsaken, and compare and collate the distresses of all men in all countries. His plan is original: it is as full of genius as of humanity. It was a voyage of discovery; a circumnavigation of charity. Already, the benefit of his labour is felt more or less in every country: I hope he will anticipate his final reward by seeing all its effects fully realised in his

own.

JUNIUS.

The principles of Junius are moderate, compared with his personalities. Some sound constitutional maxims are conveyed in his letters, but his style has undoubtedly been his passport to fame. His illustrations and metaphors are also sometimes uncommonly felicitous. The personal malevolence of his attacks it is impossible to justify. They evince a settled deliberate malignity, which could not proceed from a man of a good or noble nature, and contain allusions to obscure individuals in the public offices, which seem to have arisen less from patriotism than from individual hatred and envy. When the controversy as to the authorship of these memorable philippics had almost died away, a book appeared in 1816, bearing the title of 'Junius Identified with a Celebrated Living Character.' The living character was the late Sir Philip Francis, and certainly a mass On the 21st of January 1769 appeared the first of strong circumstantial evidence has been presented of a series of political letters, bearing the signature in his favour. The external evidence,' says Mr of JUNIUS, which have since taken their place among Macaulay,*is, we think, such as would support a the standard works of the English language. Great verdict in a civil, nay, in a criminal proceeding. The excitement prevailed in the nation at the time. The handwriting of Junius is the very peculiar handwritcontest with the American colonies, the impositioning of Francis, slightly disguised. As to the position, of new taxes, the difficulty of forming a steady and pursuits, and connexions of Junius, the following permanent administration, and the great ability and are the most important facts which can be considered eloquence of the opposition, had tended to spread a as clearly proved :-First, that he was acquainted feeling of dissatisfaction throughout the country. with the technical forms of the secretary of state's The publication of the North Briton, a periodical office; secondly, that he was intimately acquainted edited by John Wilkes, and conducted with reckless with the business of the war office; thirdly, that he, violence and asperity, added fuel to the flame, and during the year 1770, attended debates in the House the prime minister, Lord North, said justly, that of Lords, and took notes of speeches, particularly of 'the press overflowed the land with its black gall, the speeches of Lord Chatham; fourthly, that he and poisoned the minds of the people.' Without any bitterly resented the appointment of Mr Chamier to wish to express political opinions, we may say that the place of deputy-secretary at war; fifthly, that the government was not equal to the emergency, he was bound by some strong tie to the first Lord and indeed it would have required a cabinet of the Holland. Now, Francis passed some years in the highest powers and most energetic wisdom to have secretary of state's office. He was subsequently triumphed over the opposition of men like Chatham chief clerk of the war office. He repeatedly menand Burke, and writers like Junius. The most tioned that he had himself, in 1770, heard speeches popular newspaper of that day was the Public of Lord Chatham; and some of these speeches were Advertiser, published by Woodfall, a man of educa- actually printed from his notes. He resigned his tion and respectability. In this journal the writer clerkship at the war office from resentment at the known as Junius had contributed under various appointment of Mr Chamier. It was by Lord Hoisignatures for about two years. The letters by which he is now distinguished were more carefully

* Edinburgh Review for 1841.

land that he was first introduced into the public service. Now, here are five marks, all of which ought to be found in Junius. They are all five found in Francis. We do not believe that more than two of them can be found in any other person whatever. If this argument does not settle the question, there is an end of all reasoning on circum-line of distinction between the honour of the crown stantial evidence.' The same acute writer considers the internal evidence to be equally clear as to the claims of Francis. Already, however, the impression made on the public mind by the evidence for this gentleman seems to have passed away, and attention has recently been directed to another individual, who was only one of ten or more persons suspected at the time of the publication. This is Lord George Sackville, latterly Viscount Sackville, an able but unpopular soldier, cashiered from the army in consequence of neglect of duty at the battle of Minden, but who afterwards regained the favour of the government, and acted as secretary at war throughout the whole period of the American contest. A work by Mr Coventry in 1825, and a volume by Mr Jaques in 1842, have been devoted to an endeavour to fix the authorship of Junius upon Lord George, and it is surprising how many and how powerful are the arguments which have been adduced by these writers. It seems by no means unlikely that a haughty and disappointed man, who conceived himself to have suffered unjustly, should pour forth his bitter feelings in this form; but, again, if Lord George Sackville was really Junius, how strange to consider that the vituperator of the king, Lord Mansfield, and others, should in a few short years have been acting along with them in the government! Here, certainly, there is room to pause, and either to suspend judgment altogether, or to lean to the conclusion for Francis which has been favoured by such high authority.

Of the literary excellences of Junius, his sarcasm, compressed energy, and brilliant illustration, a few specimens may be quoted. His finest metaphor (as just in sentiment as beautiful in expression) is contained in the conclusion to the forty-second letter:The ministry, it seems, are labouring to draw a and the rights of the people. This new idea has yet only been started in discourse; for, in effect, both objects have been equally sacrificed. I neither understand the distinction, nor what use the ministry propose to make of it. The king's honour is that of his people. Their real honour and real interest are the same. I am not contending for a vain punctilio. A clear unblemished character comprehends not only the integrity that will not offer, but the spirit that will not submit, to an injury; and whether it belongs to an individual or to a community, it is the foundation of peace, of independence, and of safety. Private credit is wealth; public honour is security. The feather that adorns the royal bird supports his flight. Strip him of his plumage, and you fix him to the earth.'

Thus also he remarks-'In the shipwreck of the state, trifles float and are preserved; while everything solid and valuable sinks to the bottom, and is lost for ever.'

Of the supposed enmity of George III. to Wilkes, and the injudicious prosecution of that demagogue, Junius happily remarks-He said more than moderate men would justify, but not enough to entitle him to the honour of your majesty's personal resentment. The rays of royal indignation, collected upon him, served only to illuminate, and could not consume. Animated by the favour of the people on the one side, and heated by persecution on the other, his views and sentiments changed with his situation. Hardly serious at first, he is now an enthusiast. The coldest bodies warm with opposition, the hardest sparkle in collision. There is a holy mistaken zeal in politics as well as religion. By persuading others, we convince ourselves. The passions are engaged, and create a maternal affection in the mind, which forces us to love the cause for which we suffer.'

Philip Francis was the son of the Rev. Philip Francis, translator of Horace. He was born in Dublin in 1740, and at the early age of sixteen was placed by Lord Holland in the secretary of state's office. By the patronage of Pitt (Lord Chatham), he was made secretary to General Bligh in 1758, and was present at the capture of Cherburgh; in 1760 The letter to the king is the most dignified of the he accompanied Lord Kinnoul as secretary on his letters of Junius; those to the Dukes of Grafton embassy to Lisbon; and in 1763 he was appointed and Bedford the most severe. The latter afford the to a considerable situation in the war office, which most favourable specimens of the force, epigram, and he held till 1772. Next year he was made a member merciless sarcasm of his best style. The Duke of of the council appointed for the government of Ben-Grafton was descended from Charles II., and this gal, from whence he returned in 1781, after being per- afforded the satirist scope for invective:-The chapetually at war with the governor-general, Warren racter of the reputed ancestors of some men has Hastings, and being wounded by him in a duel. He made it impossible for their descendants to be vicious afterwards sat in parliament, supporting Whig prin- in the extreme, without being degenerate. Those of ciples, and was one of the 'Friends of the People' your Grace, for instance, left no distressing examples in association with Fox, Tierney, and Grey. He of virtue, even to their legitimate posterity; and you died in 1818. It must be acknowledged that the may look back with pleasure to an illustrious pedispeeches and letters of Sir Philip evince much of gree, in which heraldry has not left a single good the talent found in Junius, though they are less quality upon record to insult or upbraid you. You rhetorical in style; while the history and dispositions have better proofs of your descent, my lord, than the of the man-his strong resentments, his arrogance, register of a marriage, or any troublesome inherihis interest in the public questions of the day, tance of reputation. There are some hereditary evinced by his numerous pamphlets, even in ad- strokes of character by which a family may be as vanced age, and the whole complexion of his party clearly distinguished as by the blackest features of and political sentiments, are what we should expect the human face. Charles I. lived and died a hypoof Woodfall's celebrated correspondent. High and crite; Charles II. was a hypocrite of another sort, commanding qualities he undoubtedly possessed; nor and should have died upon the same scaffold. At was he without genuine patriotic feelings, and a the distance of a century, we see their different chadesire to labour earnestly for the public weal. His racters happily revived and blended in your Grace. error lay in mistaking his private enmities for pub- Sullen and severe without religion, profligate withlic virtue, and nursing his resentments till they at-out gaiety, you live like Charles II., without being tained a dark and unsocial malignity. His temper an amiable companion; and, for aught I know, may was irritable and gloomy, and often led him to form die as his father did, without the reputation of a mistaken and uncharitable estimates of men and martyr.'

measures.

In the same strain of elaborate and refined sar

casm the Duke of Bedford is addressed :- My lord, you are so little accustomed to receive any marks of respect or esteem from the public, that if in the following lines a compliment or expression of applause should escape me, I fear you would consider it as a mockery of your established character, and perhaps an insult to your understanding. You have nice feelings, my lord, if we may judge from your resent-ceived are harsh and reprehensible-in some parts ments. Cautious, therefore, of giving offence where you have so little deserved it, I shall leave the illustration of your virtues to other hands. Your friends have a privilege to play upon the easiness of your temper, or probably they are better acquainted with your good qualities than I am. You have done good by stealth. The rest is upon record. You have still left ample room for speculation when panegyric is exhausted.'

to consult the propriety of a bad character. Even now they tell you that life is no more than a dramatic scene, in which the hero should preserve his consistency to the last; and that, as you lived with.. out virtue, you should die without repentance.' These are certainly brilliant pieces of composition. The tone and spirit in which they are con almost fiendish-but they are the emanations of a powerful and cultivated genius, that, under better moral discipline, might have done lasting honour to literature and virtue. The acknowledged productions of Sir Philip Francis have equal animation, but less studied brevity and force of style. The soaring ardour of youth had flown; his hopes were crushed; he was not writing under the mask of a fearless and impenetrable secrecy. Yet in 1812, in a letter to After having reproached the duke for corruption Earl Grey on the subject of the blockade of Norway, and imbecility, the splendid tirade of Junius con- we find such vigorous sentences as the following:cludes in a strain of unmeasured yet lofty invec-Though a nation may be bought and sold, deceived tiveLet us consider you, then, as arrived at the or betrayed, oppressed or beggared, and in every summit of worldly greatness; let us suppose that other sense undone, all is not lost, as long as a sense all your plans of avarice and ambition are accom- of national honour survives the general ruin. Even plished, and your most sanguine wishes gratified in an individual cannot be crushed by events or overthe fear as well as the hatred of the people. Can age whelmed by adversity, if, in the wreck and ruin of itself forget that you are now in the last act of life? his fortune, the character of the man remains unCan gray hairs make folly venerable? and is there blemished. That force is elastic, and, with the help no period to be reserved for meditation and retire- of resolution, will raise him again out of any depth ment? For shame, my lord! Let it not be recorded of calamity. But if the injured sufferer, whether of you that the latest moments of your life were it be a great or a little community, a number dedicated to the same unworthy pursuits, the same of individuals or a single person, be content to subbusy agitations, in which your youth and manhood mit in silence, and to endure without resentment were exhausted. Consider that, though you cannot disgrace your former life, you are violating the character of age, and exposing the impotent imbecility, after you have lost the vigour, of the passions.

Your friends will ask, perhaps, "Whither shall this unhappy old man retire? Can he remain in the metropolis, where his life has been so often threatened, and his palace so often attacked? If he returns to Woburn, scorn and mockery await him he must create a solitude round his estate, if he would avoid the face of reproach and derision. At Plymouth his destruction would be more than probable; at Exeter inevitable. No honest Englishman will ever forget his attachment, nor any honest Scotchman forgive his treachery, to Lord Bute. At every town he enters, he must change his liveries Whichever way he flies, the hue and

and name.

cry of the country pursues him.

In another kingdom, indeed, the blessings of his administration have been more sensibly felt, his virtues better understood; or, at worst, they will not for him alone forget their hospitality." As well might Verres have returned to Sicily. You have twice escaped, my lord; beware of a third experiment. The indignation of a whole people plundered, insulted, and oppressed, as they have been, will not always be disappointed.

It is in vain, therefore, to shift the scene; you can no more fly from your enemies than from yourself. Persecuted abroad, you look into your own heart for consolation, and find nothing but reproaches and despair. But, my lord, you may quit the field of business, though not the field of danger; and though you cannot be safe, you may cease to be ridiculous. I fear you have listened too long to the advice of those pernicious friends with whose interests you have sordidly united your own, and for whom you have sacrificed everything that ought to be dear to a man of honour. They are still base enough to encourage the follies of your age, as they once did the vices of your youth. As little acquainted with the rules of decorum as with the laws of morality, they will not suffer you to profit by experience, nor even

if no complaints shall be uttered, no murmur shall be heard, deploratum est-there must be something celestial in the spirit that rises from that descent. In March 1798, I had your voluntary and entire concurrence in the following, as well as many other abandoned propositions-when we drank pure wine together-when you were young, and I was not superannuated when we left the cold infusions of prudence to fine ladies and gentle politicians-when true wisdom was not degraded by the name of moderation-when we cared but little by what majorities the nation was betrayed, or how many felous were acquitted by their peers-and when we were not afraid of being intoxicated by the elevation of a spirit too highly rectified. In England and Scotland, the general disposition of the people may be fairly judged of by the means which are said to be necessary to counteract it-an immense standing army, barracks in every part of the country, the bill of rights suspended, and, in effect, a military despotism.' The following vigorous and Junius-like passage is from a speech made by Francis in answer to the remark of Lord Chancellor Thurlow, namely, that it would have been well for the country if General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr Francis, had been drowned in their passage to India. Sir Philip observed:- His second reason for obtaining a seat in parliament, was to have an opportunity explaining his own conduct if it should be questioned, or defending it if it should be attacked. The last and not least urgent reason was, that he might be ready to defend the character of his colleagues, not against specific charges, which he was sure would never be produced, but against the language of calumny, which endeavoured to asperse without daring to accuse. It was well known that a gross and public insult had been offered to the memory General Clavering and Colonel Monson, by a person of high rank in this country. He was happy when he heard that his name was included in it with theirs. So highly did he respect the character of those men, that he deemed it an honour to share in the injustice it had suffered. It was in compliance

of

With still many generous exceptions, the body of the country is lost in apathy and indifference-sometimes strutting on stilts-for the most part grovelling on its belly-no life-blood in the heart-and instead of reason or reflection, a caput mortuum for a head-piece; of all revolutions this one is the worst, because it makes any other impossible.'* Among the lighter sketches of Francis may be taken the following brief characters of Fox and Pitt: They know nothing of Mr Fox who think that he was what is commonly called well educated. I know that it was directly or very nearly the reverse. His mind educated itself, not by early study or instruction, but by active listening and rapid apprehension. He said so in the House of Commons when he and Mr Burke parted. His powerful understanding grew like a forest oak, not by cultivation, but by neglect. Mr Pitt was a plant of an inferior order, though marvellous in its kind-a smooth bark, with the deciduous pomp and decoration of a rich foliage, and blossoms and flowers which drop off of themselves, and leave the tree naked at last to be judged by its fruits. He, indeed, as I suspect, had been educated more than enough, until there was nothing natural and spontaneous left in him. He was too polished and accurate in the minor embellishments of his art to be a great artist in anything. He could have painted the boat, and the fish, and the broken nets, but not the two fishermen. He knew his audience, and, with or without eloquence, how to summon the generous passions to his applause. The human eye soon grows weary

with the forms of the house, and not to shelter himself, or out of tenderness to the party, that he forbore to name him. He meant to describe him so exactly that he could not be mistaken. He declared, in his place in a great assembly, and in the course of a grave deliberation, "that it would have been happy for this country if General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr Francis, had been drowned in their passage to India." If this poor and spiteful invective had been uttered by a man of no consequence or repute-by any light, trifling, inconsiderate person -by a lord of the bed-chamber, for example-or any of the other silken barons of modern days, he should have heard it with indifference; but when it was seriously urged, and deliberately insisted on, by a grave lord of parliament, by a judge, by a man of ability and eminence in his profession, whose personal disposition was serious, who carried gravity to sternness, and sternness to ferocity, it could not be received with indifference, or answered without resentment. Such a man would be thought to have inquired before he pronounced. From his mouth a reproach was a sentence, an invective was a judgment. The accidents of life, and not any original distinction that he knew of, had placed him too high, and himself at too great a distance from him, to admit of any other answer than a public defiance for General Clavering, for Colonel Monson, and for himself. This was not a party question, nor should it be left to so feeble an advocate as he was to support it. The friends and fellow-soldiers of General Clavering and Colonel Monson would assist him in defending their memory. He demanded and expected the support of every man of honour in that The character of Francis is seen in the following admirhouse and in the kingdom. What character was able observation, which is at once acute and profound :— safe, if slander was permitted to attack the reputa-With a callous heart there can be no genius in the imagination of two of the most honourable and virtuous tion or wisdom in the mind; and therefore the prayer with men that ever were employed, or ever perished in equal truth and sublimity says "Incline our hearts unto the service of their country. He knew that the wisdom." Resolute thoughts find words for themselves, and authority of this man was not without weight; but make their own vehicle. Impression and expression are relahe had an infinitely higher authority to oppose to tive ideas. He who feels deeply will express strongly. The it. He had the happiness of hearing the merits of language of slight sensations is naturally feeble and superficial. General Clavering and Colonel Monson acknow--Reflections on the Abundance of Paper. 1810.-Francis excelled in pointed and pithy expression. After his return to ledged and applauded, in terms to which he was parliament in 1784, he gave great offence to Mr Pitt, by exnot at liberty to do more than to allude-they were claiming, after he had pronounced an animated eulogy on Lord rapid and expressive. He must not venture to Chatham, But he is dead, and has left nothing in this world repeat, lest he should do them injustice, or violate that resembles him!' In a speech delivered at a political meetthe forms of respect, where essentially he owed and ing in 1817, he said, 'We live in times that call for wisdom in felt the most; but he was sufficiently understood. contemplation and virtue in action; but in which virtue and The generous sensations that animate the royal wisdom will not do without resolution.' When the propertymind were easily distinguished from those which tax was imposed, he exclaimed, that the ministers were now rankled in the heart of that person who was sup-coming to the life-blood of the country, and the more they posed to be the keeper of the royal conscience.'

wanted the less they would get.' In a letter to Lord Holland, written in 1816, he remarks, Whether you look up to the top or down to the bottom, whether you mount with the froth or sink with the sediment, no rank in this country can support a

In the last of the private letters of Junius to Woodfall-the last, indeed, of his appearances in that character-he says, with his characteristic ardour and impatience, I feel for the honour of this perfectly degraded name.' 'My recital,' he says to Lord Holcountry, when I see that there are not ten men in it land, shall be inflicted on you, as if it were an operation, with compassion for the patient, with the brevity of impatience and who will unite and stand together upon any one the rapidity of youth; for I feel or fancy that I am gradually question. But it is all alike, vile and contemptible.' growing young again, in my way back to infancy. The taper This was written in January 1773. Forty-three that burns in the socket flashes more than once before it dies. years afterwards, in 1816, Sir Philip Francis thus I would not long outlive myself if I could help it, like some of writes in a letter on public affairs, addressed to Lord my old friends who pretend to be alive, when to my certain Holland, and the similarity in manner and senti- knowledge they have been dead these seven years.' The writer ment is striking. The style is not unworthy of of a memoir of Francis, in the Annual Obituary (1820), states Junius: My mind sickens and revolts at the that one of his maxims was, That the views of every one scenes of public depravity, of personal baseness, and should be directed towards a solid, however moderate indeof ruinous folly, little less than universal, which pendence, without which no man can be happy or even honest.' have passed before us, not in dramatic representa- There is a remarkable coincidence (too close to be accidental) in a private letter by Junius to his publisher Woodfall, dated tion, but in real action, since the year 1792, in the March 5, 1772: As for myself, be assured that I am far above government of this once flourishing as well as glori- all pecuniary views, and no other person I think has any claim ous kingdom. In that period a deadly revolution to share with you. Make the most of it, therefore, and let all has taken place in the moral character of the nation, your views in life be directed to a solid, however moderate and even in the instinct of the gregarious multitude. independence. Without it no man can be happy, nor even Passion of any kind, if it existed, might excite action. I honest.'

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