SOCIAL POSITION.

WHAT was the position of Junius in society? Was he a man of fortune or of humble means? Was he a peer, or the leader of a party or faction, or was he one of the common people? Let Junius tell. In his reply to Sir William Draper, he says: "I will not contend with you in point of composition—you are a scholar, Sir William, and, if I am truly informed, you write Latin with almost as much purity as English. Suffer me then (for I am a plain, unlettered man) to continue that style of interrogation which suits my capacity."Let. 7. In the following the italics are Junius'. He had been upbraided by Sir William for his assumed signature, and replied: "I should have hoped that even my name might carry some authority with it, if I had not seen how very little weight or consideration a printed paper receives, even from the respectable signature of Sir William Draper."-Let. 3. Again, he says: "Mine, I confess, are humble labors. I do not presume to instruct the learned, but simply to inform the body of the people, and I prefer that channel of conveyance which is likely to spread farthest among them."—Let. 22. Again: "Welbore Ellis, what say you? Is this the law of Parliament, or is it not? I am a plain man, sir, and can not follow you through the phlegmatic forms of an oration. Speak out, Gildrig! Say yes or no."

Let. 47. Again: "I speak to the people as one of the people."-Let. 58. In Let. 57 he says he is a "stranger" to the Livery of London. He says, also, in Let. 25, to Sir William Draper: "I believe, sir, you will never know me. A considerable time must certainly elapse before we are personally acquainted." This language is not equivocal. They neither of them personally knew the other. In Let. 18 he says he is not personally known to Mr. Grenville, a member of the House of Commons. Nor was he a collegian or lawyer. In Let. 53 he says: "I speak to facts with which all of us are conversant. I speak to men and to their experience, and will not descend to answer the little sneering sophistries of a collegian." And again: "This may be logic at Cambridge, or at the treasury, but among men of sense and honor it is folly or villainy in the extreme." In Let. 7 he says to Sir William Draper : "An academical education has given you an unlimited command over the most beautiful figures of speech. Masks, hatchets, racks, and vipers dance through your letters in all the mazes of metaphorical confusion." This is one of Junius' most withering sarcasms. In his Preface he says: "I am no lawyer by profession, nor do I pretend to be more deeply read than every English gentleman should be in the laws of his country." "I speak to the plain understanding of the people, and appeal to their honest, liberal construction of me." And of the Letters he says in the Dedication: "To me, originally, they owe nothing but a healthy, sanguine constitution."

Now, from the above facts, and the method of elimination, it may be affirmed, Junius was not prominent be

fore the English nation. He was not a peer, nor member of the House of Commons. He could not have been an army officer. He was not a collegian, nor a lawyer. What, then, was he? Just what he says himself to be: "one of the common people, with a healthy, sanguine constitution," but by no means without genius, education, and practical knowledge.

JUNIUS NOT A PARTISAN.

BUT let us continue the method of elimination till we find his true position. Because we can not safely affirm what he was, till we know in some particulars, what he was not; and it is thus the spirit and object of Junius may be made visible. I affirm, therefore, Junius was not a partisan. In proof of which I submit the following, from Let. 58, to the study of the reader:

"No man laments more sincerely than I do the unhappy differences which have arisen among the friends of the people, and divided them from each other. The cause, undoubtedly, suffers as well by the diminution of that strength which union carries along with it, as by the separate loss of personal reputation, which every man sustains when his character and conduct are frequently held forth in odious or contemptible colors. The differences are only advantageous to the common enemy of the country. The hearty friends of the cause are provoked and disgusted. The lukewarm advocate avails himself of any pretense, to relapse into that indolent indifference about every thing that ought to interest an Englishman, so unjustly dignified with the title of moderation. The false, insidious partisan, who creates or foments the disorder, sees the fruit of his dis

* King, ministers, and parliament.

honest industry ripen beyond his hopes, and rejoices in the promise of a banquet, only delicious to such an appetite as his own. It is time for those who really mean the Cause and the People, who have no view to private advantage, and who have virtue enough to prefer the general good of the community to the gratification of personal animosities-it is time for such men to interpose. Let us try whether these fatal dissensions may not yet be reconciled; or, if that be impracticable, let us guard, at least, against the worst effects of division, and endeavor to persuade these furious partisans, if they will not consent to draw together, to be separately useful to that cause which they all pretend to be attached to. Honor and honesty must not be renounced, although a thousand modes of right and wrong were to occupy the degrees of morality between Zeno and Epicurus. The fundamental principles of Christianity may still be preserved, though every zealous sectary adheres to his own exclusive doctrine, and pious ecclesiastics make it a part of their religion to persecute one another. The civil constitution, too-that legal liberty, that general creed which every Englishman professes-may still be supported, though Wilkes and Horne, and Townsend and Sawbridge, should obstinately refuse to communicate; and even if the fathers of the Church-if Saville, Richmond, Camden, Rockingham, and Chatham should disagree in the ceremonies of their political worship, and even in the interpretation of twenty texts of Magna Charta. I speak to the people as one of the people. Let us employ these men in whatever departments their various abilities are best suited to, and as much to the advantage of the common cause as their different incli