Meaning Monsieur DE LOLME; and in the "Parallel," "To speak in the words of Mons. de Lolme,"

Meaning that most ingenious foreigner, we see in two phrases, not only one manner, or habit; not only what painters call, the same pencil, the same handling; but a unity of mind and motive. We are stared in the face by one and the same author.

But still it may be objected to the conclusion here drawn from the analogy of motive and manner, exhibited by the PARALLEL, as deduced from the ESSAY, and the 35th of Junius,' as transcribed from the Pamphlet, published by Woodgate, that the PARALLEL is positively known to have been written by the author of the ESSAY, while the evidence that the Pamphlet came from the same pen as Junius's address to the King, however strong, is only presumptive; that to substantiate so impressive a fact, as that of the habit of retailing as new, old ideas and expressions, being common to De Lolme and Junius, it should be shown, by proofs as positive as those against De Lolme, that Junius actually yielded to that practice; that to serve a present occasion, he sometimes resorted to former productions, and gave in a new form, and as original matter, what had already passed the press.

Of the 95th Miscellaneous Letter, signed " A Whig," and printed May 1, 1771, all the following paragraphs were copied by Junius, to supply the notes given with the 44th Epistle, in the edition he edited for H. S. Woodfall.

"The necessity of securing the House of Commons against the King's power, so that no interruption might be given, either to the attendance of the Members in parliament, or to the freedom of debate, was the foundation of parliamentary privilege; and we may observe in all the addresses of new-appointed Speakers to the Sovereigns, the utmost privilege they demand is liberty of speech and freedom from arrests. The very word privilege means no more than immunity, or a safeguard to the party who possesses it, and can never be construed into an active power of invading the rights of others."

3

"When Mr. Wilkes was to be punished, they made no scruple about the privileges of parliament; and although it was as well known as any matter of public record and uninterrupted custom could be, that the members of either house are privileged, except in case of treason, felony, or breach of the peace, they declared, without hesita-, tion, that privilege of parliament did not extend to the case of a sedi

tious libel; and undoubtedly they would have done the same, if Mr. Wilkes had been prosecuted for any other misdemeanor whatsoever."

"The ministry are of a sudden grown wonderfully careful of privileges, which their predecessors were as ready to invade. The known laws of the land, the rights of the subject, the sanctity of charters, and the reverence due to our magistrates, must all give way, without question or resistance, to a privilege of which no man knows either the origin or the extent. The House of Commons judge of their own privileges without appeal :-they may take offence at the most innocent action, and imprison the person who offends them, during their arbitrary will and pleasure. The party has no remedy:-he cannot appeal from their jurisdiction; and if he questions the privilege, which he is supposed to have violated, it becomes an aggravation of his offence. Surely, Sir, this doctrine is not to be found in Magna Charta. If it be admitted without limitation, I affirm, that there is neither law nor liberty in this kingdom. We are the slaves of the House of Commons, and, through them, we are the slaves of the King and his Ministers."

"The mode in which the House have proceeded against the city magistrates, can neither be reconciled to natural justice, nor even to the common forms of decency.-They begin with shutting their doors against all strangers, the usual name by which they describe their constituents. Some of their debates appear in the public papers. The offence, if any, is certainly not a new one. We have the debates as regularly preserved as the Journal of Parliament; nor can there be any honest reason for concealing them. Mr. Onslow, however, thinks it necessary to persecute the press, and the House of Commons is mean enough to take part in his caprices. Lord North, who had so lately rewarded the Rev. Mr. Scot with the best living in the King's gift, for heaping invectives, equally dull and virulent, upon some of the most respectable characters in the kingdom, is now shameless enough to support a motion against the liberty of the press with the whole influence of the Crown."

"That their practice might be every way conformable to their principles, the House proceeded to advise the Crown to publish a proclamation universally acknowledged to be illegal. Mr. Moreton publicly protested against it before it was issued; and Lord Mansfield, though not scrupulous to an extreme,* speaks of it with horror. It is remarkable enough, that the very men who advised the proclamation, and who hear it arraigned every day both within doors and without, are not daring enough to utter one word in its defence, nor have

To an extreme-for-In the extreme!

they ventured to take the least notice of Mr. Wilkes for discharging the persons apprehended under it."

Here are five paragraphs borrowed by Junius from the body of a past publication of his own, and re-presented to the public in the shape of original notes to a later composition.* Obliged to acknowledge the lucubrations of his chief auxiliary, Philo Junius, (whom it would have been impossible to disguise) he converted necessity into a merit;t but trusting to the oblivion of the article, with which he made so free on this occasion, and the new character and situation given to its matter, was not equally just towards another auxiliary,—A Whig.

Had Junius confessed these plagiarisms upon himself, he had avoided an imposition upon the public. Should it be argued, that he was entitled to impose upon the public as new, any former writings of his own, my answer would be,-That I am not discussing the question of his right so to impose upon the public; but showing that Junius, like De Lolme, did so impose upon the public.

To found the conduct of Junius upon his own sense of his right so to act, and not to suppose De Lolme sanctioned by an equal self-conviction of rectitude, would be unjust: and to allow that De Lolme did feel that self-conviction, would be to grant not only all, but more than I am now contending for; would be to admit, both that De Lolme acted exactly as Junius acted, and upon the same principle.

* Almost the whole of the notes to the "Parallel between the English and Swedish Governments," are, in the like manner, taken from the body of the Essay on the English Constitution.

The fraud was innocent, and I always intended to explain it. (Preface, par. 2.)

M

CHAPTER VIII.

Letter printed in the Morning Chronicle. De Lolme identified with Junius, by two other Publications.

It has already been remarked, that on the veracity of De Lolme, in what relates to himself, we cannot always implicitly rely.* The same observation may be applied to JUNIUS. He denied privately to the printer of the Public Advertiser, and persuaded that printer to publicly deny for him, that the G1st Miscellaneous Letter, signed A. B. was the production of his pen; a composition every sentence of which declares him too clearly to require his signature. In his eighth note to the same, he says, in excuse for an article he wished to retract,

The truth is, there are people about me whom I would wish not to contradict, and who had rather see Junius in the papers ever so improperly than not at all."

And, in his Preface, declares that he is the sole depository of his own secret. In the last paragraph of his 100th Miscellaneous Letter, signed Anti-Fox, we read,—

"I know nothing of JUNIUS."

* In the first paragraph of the Advertisement to the fourth edition of his Essay, he tells us, that the work "was first published in Holland ;' and speaking of the former political prejudices of the French, he says, "A great change has of late taken place in France, where this book was first published." Again; in the fourth paragraph of the Postscript to the Advertisement, we find him saying "With respect to the exact manner of the debates in parliament, mentioned in that chapter [the last of the work] I should not be able to say more at present than I was at that time, [when he wrote the Essay in French] as I never had an opportunity to hear the debates in either house." But Mr. Walker has assured me, that to his certain knowledge, De Lolme frequently attended the Debates, both of the Lords and of the Commons. And considering how anxious and inquisitive his mind was, on all subjects connected with politics, it is difficult to suppose that he would wholly absent himself from the grand councils of a nation in whose constitutional rights, external relations, and general prosperity, he felt so constant and deep an interest.

And in the first paragraph of the fiftieth of his acknowledged Epistles, find him saying,—

"The only letter I ever addressed to the King, was so unkindly received, that I shall never presume to trouble his Majesty in that way again."

But the latter assertion was not more true than the first. He had addressed three Letters to the King: One, a large portion of which furnished the subject matter of his 35th Epistle given in the Public Advertiser, while its remaining paragraphs partly supplied the ideas and expressions of another, printed on the same day in a different Journal.