CHAPTER VIII.

CERTAIN DIFFICULTIES POINTED OUT, AND DISCUSSED.

HAVING avowed our belief, that Pitt, Earl of Chatham, was the author of the Letters under the signature of Junius, and given a sketch of his life and character, it will be expected that we give our reasons for the opinion. We acknowledge the task to be encumbered with serious difficulties; yet we venture to encounter them, and should we fail, we would rather lie under the imputation of presumptuousness than cowardice. The theme has exercised cultivated and scrutinizing minds, not merely as a question of amusing curiosity, but as involving the history of the greatest men of the age, and of the greatest event, comprehending principles and conduct which led, not only to the independence of these English colonies on Britain, but the separation of all America from the government of Europe. It stops not here, but their discussion is reflected back upon the old world with increased light and warmth, changing, as it proceeds, the crescent to a full orb, operating beneficently on the affairs of all men.

*

Most of those, who have gone before us, had made their attack by a coup-de-main and failed; warned by their discomfiture, we proceed slowly. The fortifications we are about to recon

*Algiers, a kingdom as large as all New England, has just surrendered to enlightened France; and the Turkish empire trembles at the two-fold power that surrounds her.

noitre are works of a great master,-a Vauban in the art of attack and defence. No one has circumvallated and entrenched himself with more skill and caution than JUNIUS. He has not only put into practice every known art, but resorted to the most refined species of deception;-hence we pay little regard to his assertions whenever his individual safety is concerned.

We have said that there has been more attention directed to the dress of JUNIUS, than to his person,-more observance of his style and diction, than of his mind, feelings, rank, and condition. The best way of judging of the soul of such a writer,—the surest way of scanning his principles, motives, and intentions, would be to translate his writings into the Dutch language. This would be to strip him of that which dazzles the eye, and diverts attention from the main object. It would be changing Junius's armour of polished steel for a common garb. It is very hard to know a man who is all mind, and whose primary object is disguise and concealment. That' every writer of genius has a style and manner by which he is known, is, in a great measure, true; so every man has a natural gait and gesture; but the drill-sergeant and the dancing-master alter these peculiarities for the exercise of the field and the ball-room, where discipline and art bridle nature. So in writing, discipline may put on a habit of disguise, provided the assumed dress be inferior to the original one. But whenever the individual discusses the same subject, at one time as a writer, and at another as an orator, it is very difficult to depart from his natural manner without dishonoring truth, or soiling principle. Now, the same determined national principles run through the writings of JuNIUS, which shine in the speeches of Lord CHATHAM.

That such a writer as JUNIUS should speak in a public assembly like Chatham, no one will contend, who thinks of Addison and Gibbon; but that such a consummate orator as Chatham should be able to write like JUNIUS, few will deny. The utmost resolution, in the first case, might fail, but may always succeed in the last. The most accurate engraver of the most tasteful and beautiful chirography commonly writes worse

than other men. So if the most finished orator would but take the pains, he could, by striving, make himself an equally spirited and polished writer, as was the ambitious Cicero among the Romans, and Burke among the Britons ;-Dii laboribus omnia vendunt, the gods do not give, but sell every thing to industry. Lord Chatham was a prodigy of industry. It is said, that, when a young man, he read Bailey's Dictionary, the best then extant, regularly through twice, and that he committed several of Dr. Isaac Barrow's sermons to memory for the sake of their energetic diction.* How long would it take such a genius as Chatham to acquire a knowledge of his native tongue equal to that attained by an inferior star in the political firmament of Britain, John Horne Tooke?

Allowing the Earl of Chatham to have been, what he certainly was, a polished scholar, of transcendent eloquence, with a rich and exhaustless mine of political information and energetic expressions, can it not be conceived, that such an experienced minister, in his hora solitariæ, could give to epistles, or short essays, the strength and precision of Barrow, with the pencil of Milton, and yet appear like neither of them? Beside, who shall set bounds to the combined force of genius, judgment, industry, courage, and deep resentment, when winged by a belief of the danger of his country fast rolling to the brink - of a precipice? A condition of things enough to make the

dumb speak. Reflect, reader, on the case before us. Oratory had uttered its warning voice in vain. The utmost powers of eloquence had failed. The love of country was ready to resign itself to despair.

But patriotism rallied and took a new stand, resolved to effect by the Pen what the transitory pomp of declamation had failed to accomplish. To wing the strongest arguments with the bitterest invectives and the keenest satire, requires something more than the breath of man. It requires that most potent of all instruments, the PEN, a weapon most to be relied

*Butler's Reminiscences.

on; and not the less so if the hand only appears upon the wall, while the body to which it belongs is invisible.*

In fixing the authorship of JUNIUS where we think it belongs, we calculated on encountering great difficulties,-very great difficulties; and we have met what we expected. The birth-place of Homer has never been ascertained; yet that mighty genius did not exert his extraordinary powers, and tax his ingenuity, subtilty, and contrivance, to delude the people, and lure them away from the thing sought, as JUNIUS has studiously and intently done, purposely to elude our search by systematic deception, in order to secure himself and family from destruction. In forming such a resolution, nay, determination, he must have stipulated with his conscience respecting his infringement of truth. Instances of such trespass on strict veracity may be found in the history of every age and people, even in holy history. Abraham denied Sarah to be his wife; that pattern of purity and a good conscience, Joseph, said to his brothers, all of whom he knew," By the life of King Pharaoh! ye are spies, come to see the nakedness of the land." The conduct of the prophet Jeremiah, in his intercourse with the king, may be mentioned; and what is still stronger, Peter, the patron Saint of three quarters of the Christian world, went beyond them all in falsehood. We hope to tread this holy ground with caution and due reverence. "Skin for skin; all that a man hath will he give for his life."

Concerning the concealment of truth from those who have no right to be made acquainted with it, much may be said. He who has read most of history will be best able to settle the point, when we say, that it has been the practice of some of the most

*The arrow, the most potent of all visible weapons, is a compound of the spear and the feather, the pen and the sword; the one to pierce the hostile invader, the other to direct it aright. It ought to have been the emblem, or ensign armorial of these United States, instead of Jove's solitary bird of prey, whose usual residence is on some lightning-blasted tree, or barren rock in a dreary desert, the waste of ages.

distinguished sovereigns, ambassadors, generals, and reformers, in all ages, to withhold the truth, when they thought prudence forbade it to be revealed; and this has been called wisdom.

When JUNIUS was uttering oracular truths from behind a curtain, what right had the people, or the law itself, to demand his name or see his person. The guilty Assyrian asked the prophet Daniel only the meaning of the terrific hand-writing, and, when deeply afflicted by the prediction of the calamities about to come upon his kingdom, he demanded not the sight of the person who inscribed the portentous letters on the walls of his palace. So George the Third saw only the hand, without knowing the person to whom it belonged, and disbelieved the prediction, until Time and History gave the interpretation.

It is an equally arduous and ungrateful task to vindicate the use of equivocation, and evasion of truth, by a man of otherwise unimpeached integrity, and possessing a high sense of honor. Very rigid moralists, bookish men of the closet, secluded from the world, say, that an honest man dares no more look a falsehood, than utter one. But stratagem, the sublime part of the art of war, what is it other than to deceive?—to hold up an appearance of something which is not intended, while under that mask some important object is secured? The best and greatest men of this country, and of others, have added to their renown by practising it.

From subterfuges like those just mentioned, the main difficulties attending our determination of the person of JUNIUS arise; and were they absolutely inconsistent with that high and honorable character which we attribute to him, our researches would be at an end. But even should it be impossible to vindicate such practices in foro divino, may we not apologize and extenuate them when speaking from man to his fellow-man? Do not we find every day, that fear of personal harm, loss of property, and dread of public shame, induce a majority of the people, and not a small one, to go beyond evasion even to a flat denial? Our very laws countenance it in the plea of "not guilty."

Nor is such conduct ever made a question