write, too hazardous to communicate, to an unknown person. Junius will forgive me. What can be done? Alas! where is the man, after all Wilkes has experienced, in whose friendly bosom he can repose his secret thoughts, his noble but most dangerous designs? The person most capable he can have no access to, and all others he will not trust. I stand alone, isolé as the French call it, a single column, unpropped, and perhaps nodding to its fall.

JOHN WILKES.

No. 81.

JUNIUS TO J. WILKES, ESQ.

November 9, 1771

I AM much obliged to you for your information about Eyre. The facts are as I understood them, and, with the blessing of God, I will pull Mansfield to the ground.

Your offer to communicate your plan against the Lords was voluntary. Do now as you think proper. I have no resentments but against the common enemy, and will assist you in any way that you will suffer yourself to be assisted. When you have satisfied your understanding that there may be reasons why Junius should attack the King, the Minister, the Court of King's Bench, and the House of Commons, in the way that I have done, and yet should desert or betray the man who attacks the House of Lords, I would still appeal to your heart. Or if you have any scruples about that kind of evidence, ask that amiable daughter whom you so implicitly confide in-Is it possible that Junius should betroy me? Do not conceive that I solicit new employment. I am overcomo with the slavery of writing. Farewell.

No. 82.

MR. WILKES TO JUNIUS.

Prince's Court, near Storey's Gate, Westminster,

Wednesday, January 15, 1772.

A NECESSARY attention to my health engrossed my time en tirely in the few holidays I spent at Bath, and I am rewarded

with being perfectly recovered. The repairs of the clay cot tage, to which I am tenant for life, seem to have taken place very successfully; and the building will probably last a few more years in tolerable condition.

Yesterday I met the Supporters of the Bill of Rights at the London Tavern. Much discourse passed about the publication of Junius's letter. Dr. Lee and Mr. Watkin Lewes, who were both suspected, fully exculpated themselves. I believe the publication was owing to the indiscretion of Mr. Patrick Cawdron, a linen-draper in Cheapside, who showed it to his partner on the Saturday. The partner copied it on the Sunday, and the Monday following it appeared in the Morning Chronicle. The Gazetteer only copied it from thence. The Society directed a disavowal of their publication of it to be sent to you, and are to take the letter into consideration at the next meeting*. I forgot to mention that Mr. Cawdron keeps the papers of the Society.

A

* Perhaps Wilkes himself was the traitor: it certainly was his practice to make extracts from the private letters of Junius to circulate among his friends, for he was proud of his unknown correspondent and Mentor. "card" of this description may be seen at the end of Almon's Junius (vol. ii. p. 342), given by himself to the aforesaid inculpated Dr. Arthur Lee, comprising the sentiments of Junius just referred to (p. 102) on the public merits of the primitive settlers of the American colonies. A copy of the card is subjoined.

"Junius desires Mr. Wilkes to present his compliments to Dr. Lee; his American friend is evidently a man of abilities, but I think it a little unreasonable that nothing will content him but a total surrender of the fact.

"If the ancestors of the Americans incurred no blame by their emigration, they deserved no praise; and though their emigration has been evidently useful, yet this country was not obliged to them for their desertion.

"You may assure Dr. Lee that to my heart and understanding the name of American and Englishman will ever be the same; but the Americans must not repine at being subject to an authority essential to the state of colonies, in which they have voluntarily placed themselves. British members of the factories abroad, who have more merit towards us, we subject to consulage I think there is as great certainty that the speculative right will never again be drawn into action, as the highest probability can give.

"I do not see the necessity of fighting this question in the newspapers, nor have I time. I hope, as he corrects me where I am wrong, he will sup port me where I am right. My situation is ✶✶✶✶” Mr. Almon's correspondent, who subscribes himself R. M., says, "A copy from the original card was handed to Dr. Lee by Mr. Wilkes. That original ought to have been found among the papers of Mr. Wilkes; if it was not, we may conclude he had a motive to destroy it. The correctness of the copy in

I

The winter campaign will begin with the next week. believe that the sheriffs will have the old battle renewed with the Commons, and I suppose the Lord Mayor and the courtly aldermen will commit the printer for us to release. Another scene will probably open with the Lords. Junius has observed, "the arbitrary power they have assumed of imposing fines, and committing during pleasure, will now be exercised in its fullest extent." The progress of the business I suspect will be this-a bitter libel against Pomfret, Denbigh, or Talbot, attacking the peer personally, not in his legislative or judicial capacity, will appear. His Lordship, passion's slave, will complain to the House. They will order the printer into custody, and set a heavy fine. The sheriffs the next morning will go to Newgate, examine the warrant of commitment, and, like the angel of Peter, take the prisoner by the hand, and conduct him out of prison; afterwards they will probably make their appeal to the public against the usurpation of their Lordships, and their entirely setting aside the power of juries in their proceedings.

Are there more furious wild beasts to be found in the upper den than the three I have named? Miller, the printer of the London Evening Post, at No. 2, Queen's Head Passage, Paternoster Row, is the best man I know for this business. He will print whatever is sent him. He is a fine Oliverian soldier. I intend a manifesto with my name on Monday to give spirit to the printers, and to show them who will be their protector. I foresee it will make the two Houses more cautious, but it is necessary for our friends, and the others shall be baited till they are driven into the snare. Adieu.

JOHN WILKES.

the possession of the writer of this, was vouched to him by Dr. Lee himself, who added, that Mr. Wilkes, when he delivered the extract, told him he often heard from Junius,

108

MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS

ASCRIBED TO JUNIUS.

LETTER I.

POPLICOLA TO THE PUBLIC ADVERTISER✶

28th April, 1787. Dictatura, quam in summis reipublicæ angustiis acceperat, per pacem con tinuata, libertatem fregit; donec illum conversus in rabiem populus et dii ultores de saxo Tarpeio dejecerunt.—Livy.

"The Dictatorship, which had been confided to him during a period of extreme peril to the Republic, being continued to him after the peace, he abused it to the destruction of liberty, till the people turned upon him in their rage, and the avenging gods precipitated him from the Tarpeian rock."

THE bravest and freest nations have sometimes submitted to a temporary surrender of their liberties in order to establish them for ever. At a crisis of public calamity or danger, the

* Both this and the next letter under the same signature are not equal to Junius in intensity and compactness of thought and diction, but have qualities in common with him in bitterness of invective, acuteness of stricture, frequency of classical allusion, and rigid construction of the English constitution. They are a somewhat diluted reflex of what he might have produced ere practice and confidence had raised and invigorated his style. But that he was not the author of them is indubitably settled since the publication of the Chatham Papers. Diversified and fertile as Junius undoubtedly was in his journalism, he was no Proteus, but hearty, sincere, and consistent. These data alone ignore the assumption that he could in the same breath-and that too within the space of a few short monthsbe ardently occupied in alternately exalting and depreciating the same in dividual. Yet such an inconsistency must be admitted were Junius and Poplicola to be regarded as one and the same writer.

Poplicola in April, 1767, depicts Lord Chatham as aspiring to a political dictatorship, and that the Tarpeian rock or a gibbet would be good enough

prudence of the state placed a confidence in the virtue of some distinguished citizen, and gave him power sufficient to preserve or to oppress his country. Such was the Roman dicta tor, and while his office was confined to a short period, and only applied as a remedy to the disasters of an unsuccessful war, it was usually attended with the most important advantages, and left no dangerous precedent behind. The dictator, finding employment for all his activity in repulsing a foreign invasion, had but little time to contrive the ruin of his own country, and his ambition was nobly satisfied by the honour of a triumph, and the applause of his fellow citizens. But as soon as this wise institution was corrupted, when that ur limited trust of power which should have been reserved for conjunctures of more than ordinary difficulty and hazard was, without necessity, committed to one man's uncertain moderation, what consequence could be expected but that the people should pay the dearest price for their simplicity, nor ever resume those rights which they could vainly imagine were more secure in the hands of a single man than where the laws and constitution had placed them?

for the "carcase of such a traitor." But observe the contrast: Junius in a letter addressed to the Earl of Chatham in the following January, marked "private and secret, to be opened by Lord Chatham only," sets himself forth as a warm admirer of that statesman; and anxiously cautions him against the underhand practices of his colleagues, especially of Lord Northington and Mr. Conway, concluding as follows:

My Lord, the man who presumes to give your Lordship these hints admires your character without servility, and is convinced that, if this country can be saved, it must be saved by Lord Chatham's spirit, by Lord Chatham's abilities."-Correspondence of the Earl of Chatham, vol. iii. p. 305.

So that the "dictator" of Poplicola is the saviour of Junius-both one writer. Impossible! Who then, it may be asked, was Poplicola? a question probably not very material to answer if he were not Junius. But I will mention one conjecture by an American editor, namely, that Poplicola was Horne Tooke, which seems not unlikely. About this period Mr. Horne Tooke returned from a tour in Italy as travelling tutor; on his way he spent some weeks with Mr. Wilkes in Paris, and imbibed his rancour against Grafton and Chatham; the latter, in the full bloom of place, peerage, and pension, having haughtily rejected Wilkes's application for compensation or public employment, and disowned his quondam friend "as the blasph.mer of his God, and libeller of his king." In retaliation, Wilkes addressed a bitter inculpatory letter to the Duke of Grafton (see extract, p. 114), and Mr. Tooke is surmised to have lent his auxiliary aid by the two letters signed Poplicola.-ED.