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lest he should tell them what they may not like to hear. These are but words. He means as little when he threatens as when he condescends to applaud. Let us meet upon the fair ground of truth, and if he finds one vulnerable part in Mr. Grenville's character, let him fix his poisoned arrow there'."

"If there be any thing improper in this address, [a letter addressed to G. Grenville] the singularity of your present situation will, I hope, excuse it. Your conduct attracts the attention, because it is highly interesting to the welfare of the public, and a private man who only expresses what thousands think, cannot well be accused of flattery or detraction.

* This

letter, I doubt not, will be attributed to some party friend, by men who expect no applause but from their dependents. But you, Sir, have the testimony of your enemies in your favour. After years of opposition, we see them revert to those very measures with violence, with hazard and disgrace, which in the first instance might have been conducted with ease, with dignity and moderation.

"While parliament preserves its constitutional authority, you will preserve yours. As long as there is a real representation of the people, you will be heard in that great assembly with attention, deference and respect; and if,

a Miscellaneous Letters, No. xxxi. Vol. III. p. 83.

fatally for England, the designs of the present ministry should at last succeed, you will have the consolation to reflect that your voice was heard, until the voice of truth and reason was drowned in the din of arms; and that your influence in parliament was irresistible, until every question was decided by the sword'."

How far the same principles were supported by the same writer under the signature of JUNIUS, the reader will find Post, p. 394, and Vol. II. p. 350, and it is not necessary to copy farther.

Mr. Malone, in his preface to a well-known work of Mr. Hamilton, entitled Parliamentary Logic, offers a variety of remarks in disproof that this gentleman was the writer of the letters, several of which are possessed of sufficient force, though few persons will perhaps agree with him in believing that if Hamilton had written them, he would have written them better. The following are his chief arguments:

"Now (not to insist on his own solemn asseveration near the time of his death, that he was not the author of JUNIUS3) Mr. Hamilton was so far from being an ardent party man, that during the long period above mentioned [from Jan. 1769 to Jan. 1772] he never closely connected

'Miscellaneous Letters, No. LIII. Vol. III. p. 192.

2P. xxix. et seq. 3" It has been said that he at the same time declared that he knew who was the author; but unques

tionably he never made any such declaration." MALONE.

himself with any party.

**Notwithstand

ing his extreme love of political discussion, he never, it is believed, was heard to speak of any administration or any opposition with vehemence either of censure or of praise; a character so opposite to the fervent and sometimes coarse acrimony of JUNIUS, that this consideration alone is sufficient to settle the point, as far as relates to our author, for ever. * ** * On the question-who was the author?—he was as free to talk as any other person, and often did express his opinion concerning it to the writer of this short memoir; an opinion nearly coinciding with that of those persons who appear to have had the best means of information on the subject. In a conversation on this much agitated point, he once said to an intimate friend, in a tone between seriousness and pleasantry,- You know, H ** **n, I could have written better papers than those of JUNIUS:' and so the gentleman whom he addressed, who was himself distinguished for his rhetorical powers, and a very competent judge, as well as many other persons, thought.

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"It may be added, that his style of composition was entirely different from that of this writer. * That he had none of that minute commissarial knowledge of petty military matters, which is displayed in some of the earlier papers of JUNIUS,

"And finally it may be observed, that the figures and allusions of JUNIUS are often of so different a race from those which our author [Hamilton] would have used, that he never spoke of some of them without the strongest disapprobation; and particularly when a friend, for the purpose of drawing him out, affected to think him the writer of these papers; and bantering him on the subject, taxed him with that passage in which a nobleman, then in a high office, is said to have travelled through every sign in the political zodiac, from the SCORPION, in which he stung lord Chatham, to the hopes of a VIRGIN,' &c. as if this imagery were much in his style,-Mr. Hamilton with great vehemence exclaimed, had I written such a sentence as that, I should have thought I had forfeited all pretensions to good taste in composition for ever!'

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Mr. Malone further observes, that Hamilton filled the office of chancellor of the exchequer in Ireland, from September 1763 to April 1784, during the very period in which all the letters of JUNIUS appeared before the public; and it will not very readily be credited by any one that this is likely to have been the exact quarter from which the writer of the letters in question fulminated his severe criminations against government. The subject moreover of parliamentary reform, for which JUNIUS was so zealous an advocate, Mr. Malone expressly tells us was consi

dered by Hamilton to be " of so dangerous a tendency, that he once said to a friend now living, that he would sooner suffer his right hand to be cut off, than vote for it."

The only reason indeed that appears for these letters having ever been attributed to Hamilton is, that on a certain morning he told the duke of Richmond, as has been already hinted at', the substance of a letter of JUNIUS which he pretended to have just read in the Public Advertiser; but which, on consulting the Public Advertiser, was not found to appear there, an apology instead of it being offered for its postponement till the next day, when the letter thus previously adverted to by Hamilton did actually make its appearance. That Hamilton, therefore, had a knowledge of the existence and purport of this letter is unquestionable ;-but without conceiving him the author of it, it is easy to account for the fact, by supposing him (as we have sup posed already) to have had it read to him by his friend Woodfall, antecedently to its being printed.

Another character that has been started as a claimant to the letters of JUNIUS, is the late Dr. Butler, bishop of Hereford, formerly secretary to the right hon. Bilson Legge, chancellor of the exchequer, and father to the present lord Stawell. Dr. Butler was a man of some talents, and was occasionally a political writer, and felt no small

'See Preliminary Essay, ante, p. 11, note.

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