appears to have been chiefly in remote northern parts of it could not be JUNIUS.

The editor has observed that it is equally obvious general Lee could not have been JUNIUS, from the different line of politics professed by the two characters; and not merely professed but fought for to his own outlawry by the former. JUNIUS, it has been already remarked, was a warm and determined friend to Mr. George Grenville: a zealous advocate for the stamp act, Mr. Grenville's most celebrated measure; and a decided upholder of the power of the British parliament to legislate for America, in the same manner as for any county in England. And it was because Mr. Lee was an inveterate oppugner of these doctrines, and was determined to fight against them, and even against his native country, if she insisted upon them, that he fled to the United States, took a lead in their armies, and powerfully contributed to their independence. The ensuing extracts taken from his letters contained in Mr. Langworthy's Memoirs, give his own opinions in his own words; and they may be compared with those of JUNIUS that follow the preceding extracts from Mr. Burke.

"You tell me the Americans are the most merciful people on the face of the earth: I think so too; and the strongest instance of it is, that

they did not long ago hang up you, and every advocate for the stamp act1."

"As to the rest who form what is called the opposition, they are so odious or contemptible, that the favourite himself is preferable to them; such as GRENVILLE, Bedford, Newcastle, and their associates. Temple is one of the most ridiculous order of coxcombs"."

"A formidable opposition is expected; but the heads are too odious to the nation in general, in my opinion, to carry their point. Such as Bedford, Sandwich, G. GRENVILLE, and, with submission, your friend Mansfield 3."

"We have had twenty different accounts of your arrival at Boston, which have been regularly contradicted the next morning; but as I now find it certain that you are arrived, I shall not delay a single instant addressing myself to you. It is a duty I owe to the friendship I have long and sincerely professed for you; a friendship to which you have the strongest claims from the first moment of our acquaintance; there is no man from whom I have received so many testimonies of esteem and affection; there is no man whose esteem and affection could in my opinion have done me greater honour.

1 Memoirs, p. 54, in a letter to W. H. Drayton, a member of congress.

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I shall not trouble you

with my opinion of the right of taxing America without her own consent, as I am afraid from what I have seen of your speeches, that you have already formed your creed on this article; but I will boldly affirm, had this right been established by a thousand statutes, had America admitted it from time immemorial, it would be the duty of every good Englishman to exert his utmost to divest parliament of this right, as it must inevitably work the subversion of the whole empire. * On these principles, I say, Sir, every good Englishman, abstracted of all regard for America, must oppose her being taxed by the British parliament; for my own part I am convinced that no argument (not totally abhorrent from the spirit of liberty, and the British constitution,) can be produced in support of this right.

*

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*

I have now, Sir, only to entreat, that whatever measure you pursue, whether those which your real friends (myself amongst the rest) would wish, or unfortunately those which our accursed misrulers shall dictate, you will still believe me to be personally, with the greatest sincerity and affection, yours, &c. C. Lee'."

It would be waste of time to pursue the

Letter to persuade general Burgoyne to join the Americans. Memoirs, p. 323-330. See JUNIUS's opinion of general Burgoyne, Vol. II. p. 58.

claim of general Lee any further: though a multitude of similar proofs to the same effect might be offered if necessary.

Another character to whom these letters have been ascribed is Mr. Wilkes; but that he is not the author of them must be clear to every one who will merely give a glance at either the public or the private letters. Wilkes could not have abused himself in the manner he is occasionally abused in the former; nor would he have said in the latter (since there was no necessity for his so saying)" I have been out of town for three weeks" at a time when he was closely confined in the King's Bench.

Of all the pretenders however to the honour of having written the Letters of JUNIUS, Hugh Macaulay Boyd has been brought forward with the most confidence: yet of all of them there is not one whose claims are more easily and completely refuted. It is nevertheless necessary, from the assurance with which they have been urged, to examine them with some degree of detail.

Hugh Macaulay Boyd was an Irishman of a respectable family, who was educated for the bar, which he deserted, at an early age, for poli

Private Letters, No. 11. This letter is dated Nov. 8, 1769. Wilkes entered the King's Bench prison April 27, 1768, and was liberated April 18, 1770.-See further the private correspondence between JUNIUS and Mr. Wilkes.

tics, and an unsettled life, that perpetually involved him in pecuniary distresses; and who is known as the author of "The Freeholder," which he wrote at Belfast, in the beginning of 1776; "The Whig," consisting of a series of revolutionary papers which he published in the London Courant, between November, 1779, and March, 1780, and the "Indian Observer," a miscellany of periodical essays published at Madras in 1793'. In his public conversation he was an enthusiastic admirer of the style and principles of JUNIUS; and in his political effusions he perpetually strove to imitate his manner; and, in many instances, copied his sentences verbally. On this last account the three advocates for his fame, Mr. Almon who has introduced him into his Biographical Anecdotes, Mr. Campbell who has published a life of him, and prefixed it to a new edition of " Boyd's Works," and Mr. George Chalmers, who has entered largely into the subject, in his "Appendix to the Supplemental Apology," have strenuously contended that Boyd and JUNIUS were the same person; an opinion which, they think, is rendered decisive from the following

I

He is also said by his friends to have written various letters in the Public Advertiser, in the years 1769, 1770, 1771, and afterwards in 1779; the former under a questionable signature, the latter under that of Democrates or Democraticus.