Part 308

"One of the newspapers in London at this period was the 'Public Advertiser,' printed and directed by Mr. Henry Sampson Woodfall. His politics were those of the Opposition of the day; and he readily received any contributions of a like tendency from unknown correspondents. Among others was a writer whose letters beginning at the latest in April, 1767, continued frequent through that and the ensuing year. It was the pleasure of this writer to assume a great variety of signatures in his communications, as Mnemon, Atticus, and Brutus. It does not appear, however, that these letters (excepting only some with the signature of Lucius which were published in the autumn of 1768) attracted the public attention to any unusual extent, though by no means wanting in ability, or still less in acrimony. … Such was the state of these publications, not much rising in interest above the common level of many such at other times, when on the 21st of January 1769 there came forth another letter from the same hand with the novel signature of Junius. It did not differ greatly from its predecessors either in superior merit or superior moderation; it contained, on the contrary, a fierce and indiscriminate attack on most men in high places, including the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Granby. But, unlike its predecessors, it roused to controversy a well-known and respectable opponent. Sir William Draper, General in the army and Knight of the Bath, undertook to meet and parry the blows which it had aimed at his Noble friend. In an evil hour for himself he sent to the Public Advertiser a letter subscribed with his own name, and defending the character and conduct of Lord Granby. An answer from Junius soon appeared, urging anew his original charge, and adding some thrusts at Sir William himself on the sale of a regiment, and on the nonpayment of the Manilla ransom. Wincing at the blow, Sir William more than once replied; more than once did the keen pen of Junius lay him prostrate in the dust. The discomfiture of poor Sir William was indeed complete. Even his most partial friends could not deny that so far as wit and eloquence were concerned the man in the mask had far, very far, the better in the controversy. … These victories over a man of rank and station such as Draper's gave importance to the name of Junius. Henceforth letters with that signature were eagerly expected by the public, and carefully prepared by the author. {933} He did not indeed altogether cease to write under other names; sometimes especially adopting the part of a bystander, and the signature of Philo-Junius; but it was as Junius that his main and most elaborate attacks were made. Nor was it long before he swooped at far higher game than Sir William. First came a series of most bitter pasquinades against the Duke of Grafton. Dr. Blackstone was then assailed for the unpopular vote which he gave in the case of Wilkes. In September was published a false and malignant attack upon the Duke of Bedford,—an attack, however, of which the sting is felt by his descendants to this day. In December the acme of audacity was reached by the celebrated letter to the King. All this while conjecture was busy as to the secret author. Names of well-known statesmen or well-known writers—Burke or Dunning, Boyd or Dyer, George Sackville or Gerard Hamilton—flew from mouth to mouth. Such guesses were for the most part made at mere hap-hazard, and destitute of any plausible ground. Nevertheless the stir and talk which they created added not a little to the natural effects of the writer's wit and eloquence. 'The most important secret of our times!' cries Wilkes. Junius himself took care to enhance his own importance by arrogant, nay even impious, boasts of it. In one letter of August 1771 he goes so far as to declare that 'the Bible and Junius will be read when the commentaries of the Jesuits are forgotten!' Mystery, as I have said, was one ingredient to the popularity of Junius. Another not less efficacious was supplied by persecution. In the course of 1770 Mr. Woodfall was indicted for publishing, and Mr. Almon with several others for reprinting, the letter from Junius to the King. The verdict in Woodfall's case was: Guilty of printing and publishing only. It led to repeated discussions and to ulterior proceedings. But in the temper of the public at that period such measures could end only in virtual defeat to the Government, in augmented reputation to the libeller. During the years 1770 and 1771 the letters of Junius were continued with little abatement of spirit. He renewed invectives against the Duke of Grafton; he began them against Lord Mansfield, who had presided at the trials of the printers; he plunged into the full tide of City politics; and he engaged in a keen controversy with the Rev. John Horne, afterwards Horne Tooke. The whole series of letters from January 1769, when it commences, until January 1772, when it terminates, amounts to 69, including those with the signature of Philo-Junius, those of Sir William Draper, and those of Mr. Horne. … Besides the letters which Junius designed for the press, there were many others which he wrote and sent to various persons, intending them for those persons only. Two addressed to Lord Chatham appear in Lord Chatham's correspondence. Three addressed to Mr. George Grenville have until now remained in manuscript among the papers at Wotton, or Stowe; all three were written in the same year, 1768, and the two first signed with the same initial C. Several others addressed to Wilkes were first made known through the son of Mr. Woodfall. But the most important of all, perhaps, are the private notes addressed to Mr. Woodfall himself. Of these there are upwards of sixty, signed in general with the letter C.; some only a few lines in length; but many of great value towards deciding the question of authorship. It seems that the packets containing the letters of Junius for Mr. Woodfall or the Public Advertiser were sometimes brought to the office-door, and thrown in, by an unknown gentleman, probably Junius himself; more commonly they were conveyed by a porter or other messenger hired in the streets. When some communication from Mr. Woodfall in reply was deemed desirable, Junius directed it to be addressed to him under some feigned name, and to be left till called for at the bar of some coffee-house. … It may be doubted whether Junius had any confidant or trusted friend. … When dedicating his collected letters to the English people, he declares: 'I am the sole depository of my own secret, and it shall perish with me.'"

_Lord Mahon (Earl Stanhope), History of England, 1713-1783, chapter 47 (v. 5)._

The following list of fifty-one names of persons to whom the letters of Junius have been attributed at different times by different writers is given in Cushing's "Initials and Pseudonyms":

James Adair, M. P.; Captain Allen; Lieutenant-Colonel Isaac Barre, M. P.; William Henry Cavendish Bentinck; Mr. Bickerton; Hugh M'Aulay Boyd; Edmund Burke; William Burke; John Butler, Bishop of Hereford; Lord Camden; John Lewis De Lolme; John Dunning, afterwards Lord Ashburton; Samuel Dyer; Henry Flood; Sir Philip Francis; George III.; Edward Gibbon; Richard Glover; Henry Grattan; William Greatrakes; George Grenville; James Grenville; William Gerard Hamilton; James Hollis; Thomas Hollis; Sir George Jackson; Sir William Jones; John Kent; Major-General Charles Lee; Charles Lloyd; Thomas Lyttleton; Laughlin Maclean; Rev. Edmund Marshall; Thomas Paine; William Pitt, Earl of Chatham; the Duke of Portland; Thomas Pownall; Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Robert Rich; John Roberts; Rev. Philip Rosenhagen; George, Viscount Sackville; the Earl of Shelburne; Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield; Richard Suett; Earl Temple; John Horne Tooke; Horace Walpole; Alexander Wedderburn, Lord Loughborough; John Wilkes; James Wilmot, D. D.; Daniel Wray.

ALSO IN: _G. W. Cooke, History of Party, volume 3, chapter 6._

_C. W. Dilke, Papers of a Critic, volume 2._

_Lord Macaulay, Warren Hastings (Essays, volume 5)._

_A. Bisset, Short History of the English Parliament, chapter 7._

ENGLAND: A. D. 1770. Fall of the Grafton Ministry. Beginning of the administration of Lord North.

"The incompetency of the ministry was … becoming obvious. In the first place it was divided within itself. The Prime Minister, with the Chancellor and some others, were remnants of the Chatham ministry and admirers of Chatham's policy. The rest of the Cabinet were either men who represented Bedford's party, or members of that class whose views are sufficiently explained by their name, 'the King's friends.' Grafton, fonder of hunting and the turf than of politics, had by his indolence suffered himself to fall under the influence of the last-named party, and unconstitutional action had been the result which had brought discontent in England to the verge of open outbreak. Hillsborough, under the same influence, was hurrying along the road which led to the loss of America. On this point the Prime Minister had found himself in a minority in his own Cabinet. {934} France too, under Choiseul, in alliance with Spain, was beginning to think of revenge for the losses of the Seven Years' War. A crisis was evidently approaching, and the Opposition began to close their ranks. Chatham, yielding again to the necessities of party, made a public profession of friendship with Temple and George Grenville; and though there was no cordial connection, there was external alliance between the brothers and the old Whigs under Rockingham. In the first session of 1770 the storm broke. Notwithstanding the state of public affairs, the chief topic of the King's speech was the murrain among 'horned beasts,'—a speech not of a king, but, said Junius, of 'a ruined grazier.' Chatham at once moved an amendment when the address in answer to this speech was proposed. He deplored the want of all European alliances, the fruit of our desertion of our allies at the Peace of Paris; he blamed the conduct of the ministry with regard to America, which, he thought, needed much gentle handling, inveighed strongly against the action of the Lower House in the case of Wilkes, and ended by moving that that action should at once be taken into consideration. At the sound of their old leader's voice his followers in the Cabinet could no longer be silent. Camden declared he had been a most unwilling party to the persecution of Wilkes, and though retaining the Seals attacked and voted against the ministry. In the Lower House, Granby, one of the most popular men in England, followed the same course. James Grenville and Dunning, the Solicitor-General, also resigned. Chatham's motion was lost but was followed up by Rockingham, who asked for a night to consider the state of the nation. … Grafton thus found himself in no state to meet the Opposition, and in his heart still admiring Chatham, and much disliking business, he suddenly and unexpectedly gave in his resignation the very day fixed for Rockingham's motion. The Opposition seemed to have everything in their own hands, but there was no real cordiality between the two sections. … The King with much quickness and decision, took advantage of this disunion. To him it was of paramount importance to retain his friends in office, and to avoid a new Parliament elected in the present excited state of the nation. There was only one of the late ministry capable of assuming the position of Prime Minister. This was Lord North, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and to him the King immediately and successfully applied, so that while the different sections of the Opposition were still unable to decide on any united action they were astonished to find the old ministry reconstituted and their opportunity gone. The new Prime Minister … had great capacity for business and administration, and much sound sense; he was a first-rate debater, and gifted with a wonderful sweetness of temper, which enabled him to listen unmoved, or even to sleep, during the most violent attacks upon himself, and to turn aside the bitterest invectives with a happy joke. With his accession to the Premiership the unstable character of the Government ceased. Resting on the King, making himself no more than an instrument of the King's will, and thus commanding the support of all royal influence from whatever source derived, North was able to bid defiance to all enemies, till the ill effects of such a system of government, and of the King's policy, became so evident that the clamour for a really responsible minister grew too loud to be disregarded. Thus is closed the great constitutional struggle of the early part of the reign—the struggle of the King, supported by the unrepresented masses, and the more liberal and independent of those who were represented, against the domination of the House of Commons. It was an attempt to break those trammels which, under the guise of liberty, the upper classes, the great lords and landed aristocracy, had succeeded after the Revolution in laying on both Crown and people. In that struggle the King had been victorious. But he did not recognize the alliance which had enabled him to succeed. He did not understand that the people had other objects much beyond his own."

_J. F. Bright, History of England, period 3, pages 1057-1060._

ALSO IN: _Correspondence of George III. with Lord North, volume 1._

_W. Massey, History of England: Reign of George III., chapters 10-13 (volume 1)._

_J. Adolphus, History of England: Reign of George III., chapter 17 (volume 1)._

_E. Burke, Thoughts on the Present Discontents (Works, volume 1)._

ENGLAND: A. D. 1770-1773. Repeal of the Townshend duties, except on tea. The tea-ships and the Boston Tea-party.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1770, and 1772-1773; and BOSTON: A. D. 1773.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1771. Last contention of Parliament against the Press. Freedom of reporting secured.

"The session of 1771 commenced with a new quarrel between the House of Commons and the country. The standing order for the exclusion of strangers, which had long existed (and which still exists), was seldom enforced, except when it was thought desirable that a question should be debated with closed doors. It was now attempted, by means of this order, to prevent the publication of the debates and proceedings of the House. It had long been the practice of the newspapers, and other periodical journals, to publish the debates of Parliament, under various thin disguises, and with more or less fulness and accuracy, from speeches furnished at length by the speakers themselves, to loose and meagre notes of more or less authenticity. One of the most attractive features of the 'Gentleman's Magazine,' a monthly publication of respectability, which has survived to the present day, was an article which purported to be a report of the debates in Parliament. This report was, for nearly three years, prepared by Dr. Johnson, who never attended the galleries himself, and derived his information from persons who could seldom give him more than the names of the speakers, and the side which each of them took in the debate. The speeches were, therefore, the composition of Johnson himself; and some of the most admired oratory of the period was avowedly the product of his genius. Attempts were made from time to time, both within and without the walls of Parliament, to abolish, or at least to modify, the standing order for the exclusion of strangers, by means of which the license of reporting had been restricted; for there was no order of either House specifically prohibiting the publication of its debates. But such proposals had always been resisted by the leaders of parties, who thought that the privilege was one which might be evaded, but could not safely be formally relinquished. The practice of reporting, therefore, was tolerated on the understanding, that a decent disguise should be observed; and that no publication of the proceedings of Parliament should take place during the session. {935} There can be little doubt, however, that the public journals would have gone on, with the tacit connivance of the parliamentary chiefs, until they had practically established a right of reporting regularly the proceedings of both Houses, had not the presumptuous folly of inferior members provoked a conflict with the press upon this ground of privilege, and, in the result, driven Parliament reluctantly to yield what they would otherwise have quietly conceded. It was Colonel Onslow, member for Guildford, who rudely agitated a question which wiser men had been content to leave unvexed; and by his rash meddling, precipitated the very result which he thought he could prevent. He complained that the proceedings of the House had been inaccurately reported; and that the newspapers had even presumed to reflect on the public conduct of honourable members."

_William Massey, History of England, volume 2, chapter 15._

"Certain printers were in consequence ordered to attend the bar of the House. Some appeared and were discharged, after receiving, on their knees, a reprimand from the Speaker. Others evaded compliance; and one of them, John Miller, who failed to appear, was arrested by its messenger, but instead of submitting, sent for a constable and gave the messenger into custody for an assault and false imprisonment. They were both taken before the Lord Mayor (Mr. Brass Crosby), Mr. Alderman Oliver, and the notorious John Wilkes, who had recently been invested with the aldermanic gown. These civic magistrates, on the ground that the messenger was neither a peace-officer nor a constable, and that his warrant was not backed by a city magistrate, discharged the printer from custody, and committed the messenger to prison for an unlawful arrest. Two other printers, for whose apprehension a reward had been offered by a Government proclamation, were collusively apprehended by friends, and taken before Aldermen Wilkes and Oliver, who discharged the prisoners as 'not being accused of having committed any crime.' These proceedings at once brought the House into conflict with the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London. The Lord Mayor and Alderman Oliver, who were both members of Parliament, were ordered by the House to attend in their places, and were subsequently committed to the Tower. Their imprisonment, instead of being a punishment, was one long-continued popular ovation, and from the date of their release, at the prorogation of Parliament shortly afterwards, the publication of debates has been pursued without any interference or restraint. Though still in theory a breach of privilege, reporting is now encouraged by Parliament as one of the main sources of its influence—its censure being reserved for wilful misrepresentation only. But reporters long continued beset with many difficulties. The taking of notes was prohibited, no places were reserved for reporters, and the power of a single member of either House to require the exclusion of strangers was frequently and capriciously employed. By the ancient usage of the House of Commons [until 1875] any one member by merely 'spying' strangers present could compel the Speaker to order their withdrawal."

_T. P. Taswell-Langmead, English Constitutional History, chapter 17._

ALSO IN:

_R. F. D. Palgrave, The House of Commons, lecture 2._

_T. E. May, Constitutional History of England, chapter 7 (volume 1)._

ENGLAND: A. D. 1772. The ending of Negro slavery in the British Islands.

See SLAVERY, NEGRO: A. D. 1685-1772.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1773. Reconstitution of the Government of British India.

See INDIA: A. D. 1770-1773.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1774. The Boston Port Bill, the Massachusetts Act and the Quebec Act. The First Continental Congress in America.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1774.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1774. Advent in English industries of the Steam-Engine as made efficient by James Watt.

See STEAM ENGINE: A. D. 1765-1785.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1775. The beginning of the War of the American Revolution. Lexington. Concord. The colonies in arms and Boston beleaguered. Ticonderoga. Bunker Hill. The Second Continental Congress.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1775.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1775-1776. Successful defence of Canada against American invasion.

See CANADA: A. D. 1775-1776.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1776. War measures against the colonies. The drift toward American independence.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1776 (JANUARY-JUNE).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1776-1778. The People, the Parties, the King, and Lord North, in their relations to the American War.