CHAPTER X.

PARALLELISM BETWEEN JUNIUS'S LETTERS AND CHATHAM'S SPEECHES.

SHOULD these pages ever be read beyond the bounds of these United States, the distant reader may form some idea of the great American question from the preceding chapter, brief as it is. He will see the opinion of that oracle of the law, Earl Camden, respecting the right of the British Parliament to tax the Americans without their consent. Every one knows the opinion of Lord Chatham and of the leading whigs of England, who, on that subject, made a common cause with the Americans, notwithstanding the King ventured to bring that great question to trial before the grand jury of both countries and the judgment-seat of the world.

If the foreigner should pursue the subject, he will find, that Lord North, the "King's Attorney," was, in this trial, a timid man, betraying misgivings at every step, making it evident that he acted not from himself, but from the Throne, if not from behind it. On the other side, he may see that the first English settlers of Massachusetts quitted their home, and came to a wilderness to enjoy self-government, civil and religious, .with a determination to maintain is; and that they did enjoy it, and prospered, until after General Amherst completed the conquest of Canada. He will also learn, that the colonies generously submitted to a pretty heavy external tax under the guise

of regulations of trade, as a contribution for protection, and in conformity to the haughty navigation act; but that they ever obstinately resisted the smallest internal taxation.

The distant reader may perceive, that, although Samuel Adams was the first apostle who preached Independency, yet it was a principle cherished by the first emigrants, and nourished in New England, from the time of the first Charles, till we secured it by force of arms in 1776. He will see also, that the Boston apostle of it preached, as did the first apostles of a still better cause, to a few fishermen and mechanics near the seashore, and they to others, till it spread, like the gospel, from humble persons and despised places, and shook all that could then be shaken in certain kingdoms. Since which, South America has listened to the doctrine; degenerated Greece has welcomed it; and Turkey cannot much longer keep her eyes entirely closed to its light, seeing Russia has awakened, after her long, cold night of sleep.

But let us attend to our avowed object, the valorous knight in a mask and armour of polished steel, and lay before the reader such passages from his writings, and from the reported speeches of Lord Chatham, as show their consimilitude of sentiment and even phraseology, in order to illustrate the very high probability, that both emanated from the same

mind.

With this in view, we cannot do better, than quote a part of two chapters from "JUNIUS IDENTIFIED," a pleasant book, published without a name, a few years since, in London, in order to prove that Sir Philip Francis was the author of the Letters in question. The work was re-printed in America ; and from it I learn, that it was written by Mr. John Taylor, a bookseller in London. If so, he adds one more to the number of respectable writers belonging to that class. I give his own words. "The compiler of this investigation was accidentally turning over the pages of Almon's Anecdotes of Lord CHATHAM,' when his eye was caught by several passages so much in the style of JUNIUS, as to call forth this observation,

that either Lord CHATHAM was the author of the Letters, or JUNIUS had reported Lord CHATHAM's speeches.'

Whether Mr. Taylor unluckily took the left hand road, and I the right, is submitted to the determination of the reader.

For myself I was struck and strongly impressed with the consimilarity long before Almon's Anecdotes of Lord CHATHAM were published, and have expressed this opinion, occasionally, during the last forty years of my life. In contemplating the subject, from time to time, and comparing one thing with another, and scanning the powers, conduct, and characters of men, during the latter part of the reign of George the Second and the first ten years of his grandson, George the Third, I became rivetted in the opinion, that Lord Chatham was the author of the Letters in question, and that no other man could be. In the citation of parallel passages the reader has only to substitute, instead of the name of Sir Philip Francis and JuNIUS, that of Lord CHATHAM and JUNIUS, and our object, in this portion of our disquisition, will be answered. On the review of the whole, the reader will see how one part coheres with the other.

Beside congeniality in political principle and moral sentiment, there is a remarkable similarity in metaphors and figures in the writings of JUNIUS and the speeches of CHATHAM. We shall mention some of them.

JUNIUS closes one of his letters with a simile, considered by some the finest in our language.-" Private credit is wealth, public honor is security. bird, supports his flight. fix him to the earth."

The feather that adorns the royal Strip him of his plumage, and you Now, unless JUNIUS was CHATHAM,

this beautiful metaphor savours of plagiary.

Lord CHATHAM said, in the House of Peers,-" My Lords, I revere the just prerogative of the crown, and would contend for it as warmly as for the rights of the people. They are linked together, and naturally support each other. I would not touch a feather of the prerogative. The expression, perhaps, is too light; but since I have made use of it, let me

add, that the entire command and power of directing the local disposition of the army is the royal prerogative,-is the masterfeather in the eagle's wing; and if I were permitted to carry the allusion a little farther, I should say,-they have disarmed the imperial bird,-the ministrum fulminis alitem.' The army is the thunder of the crown. The ministry have tied up the hand which should direct the bolt."-Do we not here see the germ in Chatham, of which the first quotation was the flower of JUNIUS?

But it is not the similarity of figures so much as it is the train of thought, the consimilarity of mind, which runs through the speeches of Chatham, and pervades the Letters of JUNIUS, that has tended to convince me, that the speeches of the one and the Letters of the other flowed from the same clear intellectual fountain.

We here present our readers with a series of extracts, selected and arranged in order to prove, that the reporter of the speeches, namely, Sir Philip Francis, was the identical author of the Letters; whereas we contend, that the great orator himself was, in fact, the penman of those celebrated productions, and we offer to our readers these parallel passages as evidence of it. They are taken from the reports of two important debates in the House of Lords; one on the ninth of January, and the other on the twenty-second of the same month, 1770, twelve months after the first Letter of JUNIUS appeared; and but a few weeks after the date of his famous Letter to the KING ;-in a word, in the height of the energies of the letter-writer, and during the full blaze of the eloquence of the orator.

PARALLEL PASSAGES FROM LORD CHATHAM'S SPEECHES AND

JUNIUS'S LETTERS.

Lord CHATHAM said, that "he was satisfied there was a power in some degree arbitrary, with which the constitution. trusted the crown, to be made use of under correction of the legislature, and at the hazard of the minister, upon any sudden emergency, or unforeseen calamity, which might threaten the

welfare of the people or the safety of the state. That on this principle he had himself advised a measure, which he knew was not strictly legal; but he recommended it as a measure of necessity, to save a starving people from famine, and had submitted to the judgment of his country.'

JUNIUS. "That Parliament may review the acts of a minister is unquestionable; but there is a wide difference between saying that the crown has a legal power, and that ministers may act at their peril. Instead of asserting that the proclamation was legal, he [Lord Camden] should have said, 'My Lords, I know the proclamation was illegal, but I advised it because it was indispensably necessary to save the kingdom from famine, and I submit myself to the justice and mercy of my country.'"

CHATHAM said, "that the situation of our affairs was undoubtedly a matter of moment, and highly worthy their Lordships' consideration; but that he declared with grief, there were other matters still more important, and more urgently demanding their attention. He meant the distractions and divisions which prevailed in every part of the empire. He lamented the unhappy measure, which had divided the colonies from the mother country, and which he feared had drawn. them into excesses which he could not justify. He owned his natural partiality for America, and was inclined to make allowance even for these excesses. That they ought to be treated with tenderness, for in his sense, they were ebullitions of liberty, which broke out upon the skin, and were a sign, if not of a perfect, at least of a vigorous constitution, and must not be driven in too suddenly, lest they should strike to the heart."

JUNIUS. "No man regards an eruption upon the surface, when the noble parts are invaded, and he feels a mortification approaching his heart."

*

Prohibiting the exportation of corn in a year

of scarcity.