DE LOLME, in his ESSAY, (p. 523) expresses the very same sentiment.

"Should the American Colonies have obtained their demands, the time might have come when the crown might have governed England with the supplies of America.

JUNIUS has a peculiar mode of indicating the objects by which men are actuated. Instead of saying, their secret wishes or motives are to obtain such and such advantages; he tells us that they mean them. In his sixth note to Woodfall, he says "I meant the cause and the public."

And in his first letter to Mr. Wilkes,

"I mean nothing but the cause."

So speaks the Author of a letter to Almon.

"I have long ceased to think they [the leading men of all parties] mean any thing but power, places, &c."

So again, DE LOLME, in his ESSAY, (page 471)

"While they only mean reformation and improvement, they are in danger of removing, &c. &c.

There are other important particulars in the body of this publication, which will be better noticed when we shall have occasion to recur to it. The Author's mode of taking leave of ALMON, and one or two passages in the Postscript, shall be all that at present we will add. The coincidences of expression found in the Letters of JUNIUS, and the other works which I pronounce to be his, are so numerous, and borrow f om each other so much adventitious strength, that they alone would be sufficient to prove, that JUNIUS and DE LOLME were one and the same. The present instance of this identity of phrase, consists of the farewell, in the production we are now considering, and that in the fifth private note to Woodfall. In the first, we read--

"And so, Mr. Almon, I wish you good night, &c."

And in the latter,--

"And so I wish you good night."

And again to ALMON, after the postscript,

"And so once more good night."

In this same Postscript, page, 173, we find the Author giving for his reasons, why the Judges should not be put above the inspection of their country, that--

"If they can introduce, and establish for law, their own ways of thinking, by solemn judginents from the bench, the most dangerous dicta may, when secure from the revision of the public, become by

time, respectable and venerable, and be hereafter alleged as precedents and the real established law of the realm."

Turning to page 483 of DE LOLME'S ESSAY, we read--

"They [those who administer the laws] neglect to execute those laws which they dislike, or deny the benefit of them to the separate straggling individuals who claim them, and in short, introduce prac tices that are directly derogatory to them. These practices, in a course of time, become respectable uses,* and at length obtain the force of LAWS.

In

page 147 of the anonymous composition, we meet with"There can be no harm in attacking ministers.”

And in the postscript, (page 197)

"I have no predilection for state libellers, and abominate those of them, who do not confine themselves to ministers, and their actions as such, but rake into all the passages of private life."

Then in the 32nd Miscellaneous Letter of JUNIUS, we read, "Reflections on characters merely private, ought, I own, to be discouraged."

And in his Preface,

"The indulgence of private malice should be checked and resisted by every legal means; but a constant examination into the characters and conduct of ministers and magistrates, should be equally promoted and encouraged."

Then again, if we return to the postscript of this letter, we find the author (in the last paragraph) saying—

"I bear no personal enmity to any man breathing, and wish only to advert to their public conduct."

In the same paragraph, he confesses his incompetence in the language of the law ;

"The deficiency" says he, " of deep professional learning and practice, must excuse my want of neatness in legal expression.” And JUNIUS, in his Preface, says

"I shall not think myself answered, though I should be convicted of a mistake in terms, or of misapplying the language of the law." Leaving untouched, for the present, the other numerous correspondencies between DE LOLME and JUNIUS, found in a publication which Junius himself recommends, we will next examine another anonymous production.

* Uses! It will not escape the reader's recollection that Junius also adopts this expression. "From the uses to which one part of the army has been applied." (Let. 35, par. 15.)

CHAPTER IX.

Another Publication identifying De Lolme with Junius.

FINDING, in a printed catalogue, an article entitled "A Letter to US, from One of Ourselves," I immediately surmised that it was from the pen of De Lolme.* A careful inspection of its contents convinced me that I had not erred. The ESSAY on the ENGLISH CONSTITUTION, and the EPISTLES Signed JUNIUS, are traceable in every page. Its title shows it to have been published by the late G. Kearsley, who, at the time this production appeared, was De Lolme's regular publisher.†

* The Reader, indeed, will be sensible, that no enquirer after Junius, once directed to a foreigner known to have been ambitious of imposing upon us his lucubrations as the writings of an Englishman, could see the title of the above-named production, and not be reminded of "I dedicate to you a collection of Letters written by One of Yourselves."

† Kearsley's name appears in the first English edition of the ESSAY, printed in 1775 also in the second edition, printed two years later; the very year in which this "Letter to US" was printed.

These facts, viewed with others (already noticed) respecting Almon, as De Lolme's former publisher, will enable us to trace the literary course of the latter, from 1768 to 1777.

"Parallel between the English and Swedish Governments."

A

LETTER

TO US,

FROM

ONE OF OURSELVES.

Ex Majores vestros et Posteros cogitare.

Price Eighteen Pence.

London:

PRINTED FOR G. KEARSLEY, IN FLEET STREET,

M,DCCLXXVII.

To attribute to the opportunity any writer had, in 1777, to copy from the ESSAY of DE LOLME, and the LETTERS of JUNIUS, the cloud of evidence this "Letter to Us" bears, of its being the emanation both of JUNIUS and of DE LOLMe, would be, not only to suppose a writer as intimately acquainted with the cast of ideas, and the internal construction, of each of those works, as its own author; but to believe, that he had read and studied them till his mind was saturated with the sentiments and expressions of both; till he had resigned to them the empire of his own thought and judgment, made them the common parents of all his sentiments and reflections; formed, in short, from their united suggestions, a third mind, constituted of the ideas, and opinions, of both; and a style, embracing the phraseology, and the language, of both.

This writer, after lamenting in his opening paragraph, the general disregard with which productions are received, intended for the instruction of the public, remarks, that,

"The Freedom of the Press was a privilege, obtained by the people with the greatest difficulty, and yielded up on the part of the crown with the utmost reluctance :"

And in the ESSAY, (p. 294,) we read

"And, indeed, this privilege [the Freedom of the Press] is that which has been obtained by the English nation with the greatest difficulty, and latest in point of time, at the expence of the executive power."

In the same paragraph of this Letter, we find the observation that

"Public papers, in which the public acts of government are publicly examined and freely canvassed, circulate throughout the kingdom, and fall into the hands of all ranks of the people ;" And that

"Every individual becomes acquainted how affairs are carried on." And in the ESSAY, (page 300,) are told, that—

"The several public papers circulate, or are transcribed into others, in the different country towns, and even find their way into the villages, where every man, down to the labourer, peruses them with a sort of eagerness ;"

And that

"Every individual thus becomes acquainted with the state of the nation."