CHAPTER XI.

SOME FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS LYING ROUND THE MAIN TRACK OF

THE ARGUMENT.

These are complements, these are humours.

MOTH (Love's Labor Lost).

My lady's a Catayan; we are politicians; Malvolio's a Peg-a-Ramsay, and three merry men be we!

SIR TOBY BELCH.

HAVING thus, like Allan McAulay, in the Legend of Montrose, pushed the follower from the upper place into his fitting position below his chieftain, we shall proceed with a few more of those minor considerations, without which, perhaps, the reader may not think the subject properly rounded off.

Junius says: "I am the sole depository of my secret;" and he is believed by a great number. But this was, of course, said to lead inquirers astray. The identity of the secret writer could not be concealed from the reporter of Lord Chatham's speeches; and, therefore, it is certain that Francis was the confidant and agent of a mystery which stood in need of some such medium. Of the exact nature of his coöperation we must be ignorant, as yet. But it may be believed he was employed in conveying manuscripts, and

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sometimes copying them. As a bringer of reports and general intelligence, he was probably of little use. Lord Chatham had means of knowing the most important or most curious occurrences of politics and high life, far beyond those of any clerk in the War Office. It is enough for our purpose to show what has been suggested and admitted by Lord Mahon and others—that young Philip Francis was the confidential agent of the Earl of Chatham at that Junian period. We may conclude with certainty that he was not the earl's only aid in the management of such a wonderful business.

If the letters could have been written without the knowledge of Lady Chatham, we believe his lordship could have contrived to dispense with her participation. But concealment from her was an utter impossibility; and, therefore, we are convinced she was his best auxiliary. She was always, as the world knows, the earl's amanuensis, and conducted his correspondence whenever he was ill with the gout, or wished to be thought so. Lady Chatham, sister of Richard Earl Temple and George Grenville, was a woman of strong understanding, fine taste, and literary accomplishments; one capable of comprehending and sympathizing with such a genius as her husband's. It is impossible to suppose she would not be the frequent, it may be too much to say the constant, copier of his letters-especially those signed Junius. In this business she would naturally employ a partially disguised manner, but such as must still leave to her handwriting that feminine character which seems to have struck all those who saw the manuscript of Junius. It is highly significant, that when Mr.

Wilkes and Mr. Butler, author of the "Reminiscences," examined one of the private letters, the former perceived in it a strong likeness to the handwriting on a card of invitation he had once received from the old Countess Temple, mother of Lady Chatham. In this business of writing cards, it is natural to suppose the old lady may have employed her daughters. This, of course, has little in it. But certainly one grand element of such a mystery would be the intimate coöperation of a wife, and especially if she were a highly educated woman of abilities and skilled in the work of an amanuensis, such as Lady Chatham confessedly was. Mr. Thackeray says of her, that "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 correspondents." We have already seen enough to show that, during the Junian interval, her ladyship was a participator in the concealments which enveloped the unaccountable Earl.

The Junian manuscripts were not all in the same hand. We can very well conceive how many of them would be in the earl's own hand disguised. His autographs that we have seen are wonderfully loose and sprawling, reminding one of the style of his letters to the Duke of Newcastle and the king, and those bows at the levee, which used to set all the world smiling and staring. It is not to be supposed that such a consummate actor and mimic as William Pitt would neglect that strategy of handwriting. As to the show of crippled fingers, made during his retirement, in getting the

power of attorney for her ladyship, it is as fallacious as the pretense of insanity. This device of the attorney, adopted at such a time, is an evidence of design, as we have said. In everything respecting the man who wrote those remarkable letters, you must be prepared to meet with shows and simulations. Whatever the critics may think, Junius was no simpleton, but a match for Machiavelli in cunning. Lord Chatham would not be Junius, if he could not mould his handwriting to another style as easily and dexterously as we have shown he could mould his mind. Such considerations as these, and others which will suggest themselves to the inquirer, must, of course, depend on the general assertion of these pages for their complete validity. They do not pretend to support any theory; they are content to follow it.

It has been argued, and it may appear to some readers of the letters, that Junius and Lord Chatham entertained different opinions on the American Stamp Act, and American affairs in general. It is not inconsistent with the aim of Junius-such as we can gather it, from a perusal of his literature-to compromise his real opinions on subjects lying comparatively aside from his main course, in order to insure his secret. And if Junius and Chatham were at issue on this question, we should hold it as but a slight argument against our position. There is, however, no distinct difference at all, or none that cannot be easily explained. The truth was, that Lord Chatham held very modified opinions on that most bewildering theme; and those of Junius are just as modified.

In the first place, we must consider the necessity of

disguise that which compelled Junius, on setting out, to abuse the only two men he ever eulogized subsequently. Lord Chatham had opposed the Grenvillite Stamp Act; but more for the danger and impracticability of it; more because it was proposed by an incompetent minister, than on principle. He had, or asserted he had, from the beginning, made a distinction between external and internal taxation of the colonies. But he always stood up for the sovereignty of England over these, and her power to make laws for them. We can easily believe that, if he had been minister, with a heavy war-drain on the treasury, he would have tried to get money from the Americans either by way of local tribute or custom-house impost, which last his luckless colleagues actually decreed in 1768. In this case the colonists would grumble just as surely as they did in the other, and Mr. Pitt would as certainly try to bring them to order. Junius makes a show of blaming Lord Chatham for encouraging the American resistance the Grenvillite argument and yet he complains that, after the Stamp Act, in spite of experience, "a new mode of taxing the colonies is invented, and a question revived, which ought to have been buried in oblivion."* He also says, the right to tax the colonists should never be exercised, but never be given up—a right merely speculative.

These sentiments, as the reader sees, are loose and broad enough to cover, with ease, many more differences than we discover between Chatham and Junius, in this matter. Junius taunts the king that the colonists justly complain of an

*Letter i., 21st January, 1769