even the libels on the king in 1770? or when, if the peril remained, the writer would have felt himself borne on a tide of popular applause high above the inflictions of law.

But, writing for another, the most natural result was, that he should have been pledged to extinguish all proof of the transaction; to give up every fragment that could lead to the discovery at any future period; and to surrender the whole mystery into the hands of the superior, for whose purposes it had been constructed, and who, while he had no fame to acquire by its being made public, might be undone by its betrayal.

The marks of private secretaryship are so strong, that all the probable conjectures have pointed to writers under that relation; Lloyd, the private secretary of George Grenville; Greatrakes, Lord Shelburne's private secretary; Rosenhagen, who was so much concerned in the business of Shelburne House, that he may be considered as a second secretary; and Macauley Boyd, who was perpetually about some public man, and who was at length fixed by his friends on Lord Macartney's establishment, and went with him to take office in India.

But, mortifying as it may be to the disputants on the subject, the discovery is now beyond rational hope; for Junius intimates his having been a spectator of parliamentary proceedings even farther back than the year 1743; which, supposing him to have been twenty years old at the time, would give him more than a century for his experience. In the long interval since 1772, when the letters ceased, not the slightest clew has been discovered; though doubtless the keenest inquiry was set on foot by the parties assailed. Sir William Draper died with but one wish, though a sufficiently uncharitable one, that he could have found out his castigator before he took leave of the world. Lord North often avowed his

total ignorance of the writer. The king's reported

observation to Gen. Desaguiliers, in 1772, "We know who Junius is, and he will write no more," is unsubstantiated; and if ever made, was probably prefaced with a supposition; for no publicity ever followed; and what neither the minister of the day nor his successors ever knew, could scarcely have come to the king's knowledge but by inspiration, nor remained locked up there but by a reserve not far short of a political error.

But the question is not worth the trouble of discovery; for, since the personal resentment is past, its interest can arise only from pulling the mask off the visage of some individual of political eminence, and giving us the amusing contrast of his real and his assumed physiognomy; or from unearthing some great unknown genius. But the leaders have been already excluded; and the composition of the letters demanded no extraordinary powers. Their secret information has been vaunted; but Junius gives us no more than what would now be called the "chat of the clubs;" the currency of conversation, which any man mixing in general life might collect in his halfhour's walk down St. James's Street: he gives us no insight into the purposes of government; of the counsels of the cabinet he knows nothing. The style was undeniably excellent for the purpose, and its writer must have been a man of ability. If it had been original, he might have been a man of genius; but it was notoriously formed on Col. Titus's letter, which, from its strong peculiarities, is of easy imitation. The crime and the blunder together of Junius were that he attacked the king, a man so publicly honest and so personally virtuous, that his assailant inevitably pronounced himself a libeller. But if he had restricted his lash to the contending politicians of the day, justice would have rejoiced in his vigorous severity. Who could have regretted the keenest application of the scourge to the Duke of Grafton, the most incapable of ministers, and the most openly

M

and offensively profligate of men; to the indomitable selfishness of Mansfield; to the avarice of Bedford, the suspicious negotiator of the scandalous treaty of 1763; or to the slippered and drivelling ambition of North, sacrificing an empire to his covetousness of power?

CHAPTER VIII.

The King's Illness.

THE prince's adoption of whig politics had deeply offended his royal father; for the coalition ministry had made Fox personally obnoxious to the monarch, who remembered its power by a series of mortifications, so keen that they had inspired the desperate idea of abandoning England for a time, and seeking refuge for his broken spirit and insulted authority in Hanover. This conception the king was said to have so far matured as to have communicated to Thurlow; who, however, repelled it in the most direct manner, telling his majesty,-that "though it might be easy to go to Hanover, it might be difficult to return to England; that James the Second's was a case in point; and that the best plan was, to let the coalition take their way for a while, as they were sure to plunge themselves into some embarrassment, and then he might have them at his disposal."

The advice was solid and successful. The king thenceforth exhibited his aversion to the ministry in the most open manner, by steadily refusing to bestow a single English peerage, while they were in power; and it was surmised, that Fox was driven by his consciousness of this total alienation, to the rash and defying measure of the India bill, as a support against

the throne. The game was a bold one; for its success would have made Fox king of lords, commons, and people; and George the Third, king of masters of the stag-hounds, gentlemen of the bed-chamber, and canons of Windsor. But it failed, and its failure was ruin. It not merely overthrew Fox, but it spread the ruin to every thing that bore the name. His banner was not simply borne down in the casual fortunes.of the fight; but it was broken, trampled on, and extinguished. By the India bill the languors of political warfare were turned into the fierceness of personal combat; and whiggism, pressed by the newarmed wrath of the monarch, and losing its old refuge in the popular sympathy, hated by the throne, and repelled by the nation, feebly dispersed on the field.

Such is the fate of the noblest parties, when the spirit that once animated them has passed away. The men of 1688 would have found it impossible to recognise their descendants, in the shifting politicians of the eighteenth century; but wo be to the people whose liberties depend upon the character of individuals! The revolution itself would have been a mockery, but for its taking refuge in the manliness and religious virtue of the nation. All the overthrows of all the tyrannies of ancient or modern days were never able to make corruption free; more than the loudest professions of principle ever made a profligate the fit trustee and champion of national freedom. The personal vice nullifies and contaminates the public profession. No revolution ever succeeded, nor ever deserved to succeed, which was not demanded by the same natural and righteous necessity which demands the defence of our fireside; and which was not conducted by men unstained by the crime of individual ambition, or the deeper crime of bartering the national blood for their own avarice, licentiousness, or revenge;-men who felt themselves periling their lives for an object that dignifies

death; and in the impulse of holiness and faith offering up their existence a willing and solemn sacrifice to their fellow-men and their God.

The success of the first French revolution is no answer to this principle; for France 'had showed only the frightful rapidity with which the name of freedom can be vitiated; and the incalculable means of public explosion and misery which may exist under the surface of the most ostentatious patriotism. The second revolution is yet to display its results; but auspicious and justifiable as has been its commencement, its only security will be found in purifying the habits of the people.

If Italy, with her magnificent powers, her vivid susceptibility of character, her living genius, and her imperishable fame,-Italy, where every foot of ground was the foundation of some monument of the most illustrious supremacy of the human mind, -is now a prison, the crime and the folly are her own; her own vices have riveted the chain round her neck, her own hand has barred the dungeon; and in that dungeon she will remain for ever, if she wait until vice shall give vigour to her limbs, or superstition throw back the gates of her living sepulchre. A purer influence must descend upon her. A deliverer, not of the earth, earthy,—but an immortal visitant, shedding the light of holiness and religion from its vesture, must come upon her darkness; and, like the angel that came to Peter, bid her awake and follow.

If Spain and Portugal are still convulsed with civil discord, who can hope to see rational freedom ever existing in those lands, while the corruption of the people feeds the license of the throne; while, if the king imprisons, the peasant stabs; while, if the crown violates the privileges of the subject, the subject habitually violates the honour of the holiest ties of our nature; while, if government is tyranny, private life is rapine, promiscuous passion,