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motive was to hit in the point which he believed was the most sensitive, is beyond all doubt. The Duke's public character mainly rested on the success of his negotiation; and, as he was naturally tenacious of that reputation, so were the people of this country equally alive to any suspicion of pecuniary corruption in public men. Therefore it was that the species of falsehood must be coined which should meet those several demands for it. But we are not left to conjecture upon this point. Under the writer's own hand we have a history of the designs over which his heart brooded. The printer had been deterred from publishing a letter, under the signature of Vindex, by the fear of prosecution. Junius tells him that the charge contained in it is the only one to which its object has not long been callous. The intended victim was the King; the

charge was of cowardice! "I must tell you," says Junius, "and with positive certainty, that our gracious is as callous as stockfish to every thing but the reproach of cowardice. That alone is able to set the humours afloat. After a paper of that. kind he won't eat meat for a week" (i. 221). I need hardly add that the utter falsehood of such a charge was at all times of George III.'s life admitted by all parties, even in the utmost heat of factious conflict. But this writer, with the malignity of a fiend, frames his falsehood in order to assail with certainty the tender point of his victim.

And such, we may be assured, are the motives which actuate the greater number of those who drive the base trade of the concealed slanderer.

It is truly painful to reflect upon the success which attended the disreputable labours of this author, at a time when good writing was very rare in ephemeral publications, and long before the periodical press had lost its influence and respectability by the excesses into which of late years it has run. The boldness of the assaults made upon individuals, full as much as the power with which they were conducted, had the effect of overawing the public, and in many cases of silencing those against whom they operated. The very circumstance which should have impaired their force gave them, as it always does, additional impression. The "unknown" and the "grand" were, as usual, confounded. The same things which, said by any one individual, though respectable in himself, would have had but little weight, seemed to proceed from an awful and undefined power, which might be one or many, and might possess an importance that the imagination was left to expand at will. But it is still more painful to observe such men as Lord North and Mr. Burke lending themselves to support the popular delusion; the one from his wonted candour and good humour, the other from factious motives; both, in some degree, from the kind of fear which makes superstitious men sacrifice to evil spirits.

Lord North calls him "the great Boar of the Forest," and the "mighty Junius:" Mr. Burke wishes that Parliament had the benefit of "his knowledge, his firmness, his integrity." It would have been a worthier task for Lord North to bring his unblushing falsehoods to trial before a jury of his country, as the Duke of Bedford should certainly have done; and it would have conferred more honour on Mr. Burke to have joined with all good men in reprobating the practices by which one of the foulest of libellers degraded the liberty of the press, and prepared the way for the excesses which Mr. Burke himself was fated afterwards to deplore, and the contempt into which his perspicacity did not then perceive this great safeguard of liberty was at a still later period in peril of falling.

At all events, we who now have had leisure to contemplate the period in which those great statesmen lived, and to weigh the justice of their tributes to this too celebrated writer, have the duty cast upon us of exposing his falsehoods, and of rendering a necessary, though a tardy reparation, to those characters which he unscrupulously assailed. Nor is there any duty the discharge of which brings along with it more true satisfaction. It may be humble in its execution, but its aim is lofty; it may be feebly performed, but it is exceedingly grateful. Nor can any one rise from his labours with a more heartfelt satisfaction than he who

"Sed

thinks that he has contributed to rescue merit from obloquy, and to further the most sacred of all human interests, the defeat of injustice-injustice in which they share who fear to resist it. injustitiæ genera duo sunt; unum eorum qui inferunt; alterum eorum qui ab iis, quibus infertur, si possunt, non propulsant injuriam." (Cic. De Off., I.) *

* "But of injustice there are two kinds : one, theirs who do an injury; the other, theirs who do not prevent an injury when they have the power."

EARL CAMDEN.

AMONG the names that adorn the legal profession, there are few which stand so high as that of Camden. His reputation as a lawyer could not have gained this place for him; even as a judge he would not have commanded such distinction, though on the Bench he greatly increased the fame which he brought from the bar; but in the senate he had no professional superior, and his integrity for the most part spotless in all the relations of public life, with the manly firmness which he uniformly displayed in maintaining the free principles of the constitution, wholly unmixed with any leaning towards extravagant popular opinions, or any disposition to court vulgar favour, justly entitle him to the very highest place among the Judges of England.

It was a remarkable circumstance that although he entered the profession with all the advantages of elevated station, he was less successful in its pursuit, and came more slowly into its emoluments, than almost all others that can be mentioned who have raised themselves to its more eminent heights from

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