skile, together with religious liberty, has allured and already drafted from Poland and Germany a colonization of six hundred thousand souls in six years only, from 1762 to 1768.

Liberty, civil and religious, has sweet and attractive charms. The enjoyment of this, with property, has filled the English settlers in America with a most amazing spirit which has operated, and still will operate, with great energy. Never before has the experiment been so effectually tried of every man's reaping the fruits of his labor and feeling his share in the aggregate system of power. The ancient republics did not stand on the people at large, and therefore no example or precedent can be taken from them. Even men of arbitrary principles will be obliged, if they would figure in these States, to assume the patriot so long that they will at length become charmed with the sweets of liberty.

Our degree of population is such as to give us reason to expect that this will become a great people. It is probable that within a century from our independence the sun will shine on fifty millions of inhabitants in the United States. This will be a great, a very great nation, nearly equal to half Europe. Already has our colonization extended down the Ohio, and to Koskaseah on the Mississippi. And if the present ratio of increase should be rather diminished in some of the other settlements, yet an accelerated multiplication will attend our general propagation and overspread the whole territory westward for ages. So that before the millennium the English settlements in America may become more numer ous millions than that greatest dominion on earth, the Chinese empire. Should this prove a future fact, how applicable would be the text, when the Lord shall have made his American Israel high above all nations which he has made, in numbers, and in praise, and in name, and in honor!

I am sensible some will consider these as visionary, utopian ideas; and so they would have judged had they lived in the apostolic age and been told that by the time of Constantine the empire would have become Christian. As visionary that the twenty thousand souls which first settled New England should be multiplied to near a million in a century and a half. As visionary that the Ottoman empire must fall by the Russian. As visionary to the Catholics is the certain downfall of the pontificate. As utopian would it have been to the loyalists, at the battle of Lexington, that in less than eight years the independence and sovereignty of the United States should be acknowledged by four European sovereignties, one of which should be Britain herself. How wonderful the revolutions, the events of Providence! We live in an age of wonders: we have lived an age in a few years; we have seen more wonders accomplished in eight years than are usually unfolded in a century.

God be thanked, we have lived to see peace restored to this bleeding land, at least a general cessation of hostilities among the belligerent powers. And on this occasion does it not become us to reflect how wonderful, how gracious, how glorious has been the good hand of our God upon us in carrying us through so tremendous a warfare! We have sustained a force brought against us which might have made any empire on earth to tremble; and yet our bow has abode in strength, and, having obtained help of God, we continue unto this day. Forced unto the last solemn appeal, America watched for the first blood; this was shed by Britons on the nineteenth of April, 1775, which instantly sprung an army of twenty thousand into spontaneous existence, with the enterprising and daring, if imprudent, resolution of entering Boston and forcibly disburdening it of its bloody legions. Every patriot trem

bled till we had proved our armor, till it could be seen whether this hasty concourse was susceptible of exercitual arrangement and could face the enemy with firmness. They early gave us the decided proof of this in the memorable battle of Bunker Hill. We were satisfied. This instantly convinced us, and for the first time convinced Britons themselves, that Americans both would and could fight with great effect. Whereupon Congress put at the head of this spirited army the only man on whom the eyes of all Israel were placed. Posterity, I apprehend, and the world itself, inconsiderate and incredulous as they may be of the dominion of heaven, will yet do so much justice to the divine moral government as to acknowledge that this American Joshua was raised up by God, and divinely formed, by a peculiar influence of the Sovereign of the Universe, for the great work of leading the armies of this American Joseph (now separated from his brethren), and conducting this people through the severe, the arduous conflict, to liberty and independence.

9

JUNIUS

HO was Junius? Volumes have been written to answer this question,

WH

and it remains still undecided. The claims of nearly twenty persons having been examined and set aside, only two names remain as candidates for this distinction. They are Sir Philip Francis, and Lord George Sackville, afterward Lord George Germain. In favor and against each of these, there is circumstantial evidence of considerable weight. Neither of them has left any specimens of style which are equal in elegance and force to the more finished productions of Junius. Lord George Sackville, however, is far inferior in this respect. He was never a practical writer; and it seems impossible to believe that the mind which expressed itself in the compositions he has left us could ever have been raised by any excitement of emotion or fervor of effort into a capacity to produce the Letters of Junius. Sir Philip Francis was confessedly a far more able writer. He had studied composition from early life. He was diligent in his attendance on Parliament; and he reported some of Lord Chatham's speeches with uncommon elegance and force. If we must choose between the twoif there is no other name to be brought forward, and this seems hardly possible the weight of evidence is certainly in his favor.

The Letters of Junius have taken a permanent place in the eloquence of our language. Though often false in statement and malignant in spirit, they will never cease to be read as specimens of powerful composition. For the union of brilliancy and force there is nothing superior to them in our literature. Nor is it for his style alone that Junius deserves to be studied. He shows great rhetorical skill in his mode of developing a subject. There is an arrangement of a given mass of thought which serves to throw it upon the mind with the greatest possible effect. There is another arrangement which defeats its object and renders the impression feeble or indistinct. Demosthenes was, of all men, most perfectly master of the one; the majority of extemporaneous speakers are equally good examples of the other.

It is only as an orator for such he undoubtedly was in public life, and such he truly is in these letters that he is here represented. In this character his writings are worthy of the closest study. He addressed his first letter to the printer of "The Public Advertiser" under date of January 21, 1769. It was elaborated with great care; but its most striking peculiarity was the daring spirit of personal attack by which it was characterized. This was done with a dignity, force, and elegance entirely without parallel in the columns of a newspaper. The attention of the public was strongly arrested, and as if for the very purpose of compelling the author to go on, and of giving notoriety to his efforts, Sir William Draper, Knight of the Bath, came out under his own signature, charging him with "maliciously traducing the best characters of the kingdom," and going on particularly to defend the commander-in-chief, the Marquess of Granby, against the severe imputations of this letter. Junius himself could not have asked or conceived of anything more perfectly suited to make him conspicuous in the eyes of the public. He seized at once on the weak

points of Sir William's letter. He turned the argument against him. He overwhelmed him with derision. He glanced at some of the leading transactions of his life. He goaded him with the most humiliating insinuations and interrogatories. Never was an assailant so instantaneously put on the defensive. Instead of silencing the "traducer" and making him the object of public indignation, he was himself dragged to the confessional, or rather placed as a culprit at the bar of the public. From this time the success of these eloquent letters was assured.

Junius assailed the Duke of Grafton repeatedly on individual points, and then came out in two letters, under date of May 30 and July 8, 1769, with a general review of his grace's life and conduct. These are among his most finished productions. On the 19th of September he attacked the Duke of Bedford, whose interests had been preferred to those of Lord Rockingham in certain ministerial arrangements. This letter has even more force than the two preceding ones. Three months after, December 19, 1769, appeared his celebrated Letter to the King, the longest and most elaborate of all his performances. At the end of nineteen days, January 28, 1770, the Duke of Grafton was driven from power. Junius continued his labors nearly two years longer. In January, 1772, the King remarked to a friend in confidence, "Junius is known, and will write no more." His last performance was dated January 21, 1772, three years to a day from his first great letter to the printer of "The Public Advertiser.” It is a significant fact that within a few months Sir Philip Francis was appointed to one of the highest stations of profit and trust in India, at distance of fifteen thousand miles from the seat of English politics!

TO THE PRINTER OF "THE PUBLIC ADVERTISER"

S

DATED JANUARY 21, 1769

IR,-The submission of a free people to the executive

authority of government is no more than a compliance with laws which they themselves have enacted. While the national honor is firmly maintained abroad, and while justice is impartially administered at home, the obedience of the subject will be voluntary, cheerful, and, I might say, almost unlimited. A generous nation is grateful even for the preservation of its rights, and willingly extends the respect due to the office of a good prince into an affection for his person. Loyalty, in the heart and understanding of an Englishman, is a rational attachment to the guardian of the laws. Prejudices and passion have sometimes carried it to a criminal length; and, whatever foreigners may imagine, we know that Englishmen have