Junius Unmasked. Joel Moody
Sense was, in the strictest sense, revolutionary, and, under the tyranny of king, lords, and commons, meant war. It was not a phrase without meaning, but a principle proclaimed, and it passed more readily into the understanding of the common people because conveyed in common speech. When Reid said, "I despise philosophy, and renounce its guidance; let my soul dwell in common sense," he illuminated all Britain and America. The philosophy of common sense entered the professor's chair, invaded the pulpit, and, having passed thence into the humblest cottage, soon took a higher range—it went immediately up and knocked at the king's gate. It would be false to say it found admittance there. It was only because there had been a new world opened as an asylum for the oppressed of every land, that it did not sweep kings and monarchs from all the high places in Europe.
At this time, too, Mr. Pitt, the great commoner, the friend of common sense and English liberty, in his old age, war-worn and sick, had compromised with his vanity for a title. In his great fall from Pitt to Chatham, from the people to a peerage, he gained nothing but lost his good name. He exchanged worth for a bauble, and a noble respect for the contempt of nobles and the sorrows of the people. Mr. Pitt had departed, Lord Chatham was passing away; and in any assault by a trafficking ministry and corrupt legislature upon the people's rights, there was no one left to bend the bow at the gates.
To tax the colonies became the settled plan of king, ministers, and parliament. The tax was easily imposed, but could not be enforced. Freedom had long before been driven to America, and, in a line of direct descent, her blood had been transmitted from mother to son. The true sons of freedom now stood shoulder to shoulder, and, looking forward to independence, claimed to have rights as men, which king and lords would not concede to subjects. The Stamp Act was passed and repealed, and a Test Act substituted. England refused to compel the colonies to give up their money without their consent, but menaced them, and consoled herself with these words: "The king in parliament hath full power to bind the colonies in all things whatsoever." Having surrendered the fact, she indulged in declamation, and the world laughed at her folly. Like a fretful and stupid mother demanding a favor of her son grown to manhood, and, being refused, persists in scolding and shaking the fist at him, as if he still wore a baby's frock.
At this juncture Junius wrote his Letters. The circumstances called him forth. He was a child of fate. He spoke to the greatest personages, assaulted the strongest power, and advocated the rights of man before the highest tribunal then acknowledged on earth. This he could not do openly, and what he said came as with the power of a hidden god. There is no evidence that Junius ever revealed himself. "I am the sole depository of my own secret, and it shall perish with me." This he said and religiously kept. But his was the age which demanded it. He also said: "Whenever Junius appears, he must encounter a host of enemies." One hundred years have passed since he said this, but this "host" is less to be feared now than when he wrote. No one now can injure him, and there are few who would assault his grave. It is time to unmask Junius, and though still to be hated, I will reveal the enemy of kings and the friend of man. The reforms he advocated for England are partly accomplished, and the principles he taught, if not adopted there, have been established in America. He left no child to bear his name, but he was the father of a nation. The unimpaired inheritance was his thoughts and principles; these he transmitted, not alone to this nation, but to the world—for the world was his country.
METHOD.
In the investigation of a subject so startling and novel, and especially when it leads to the criticism of a work which has found favor with the public, and now to be attributed to an author who has been publicly condemned, it becomes the critic to state clearly the plan of his argument, what he designs to do, and how he intends to do it. I therefore ask: Who was Junius? I answer: Thomas Paine. The object of this book is to prove this, and possibly to demonstrate it. To do this, I shall follow as closely as possible the order of events, giving parallels and coincidences in character, conduct, and composition of the masked and the open life.
I do not fear as to the proof of my proposition, but I shall aim higher, I shall try to demonstrate by the overwhelming weight of facts. Proof produces belief, demonstration knowledge. The innocent have been hanged on the evidence of proof, but a fact is established by demonstration. Demonstration follows proof, and knowledge follows belief; and ascending from the individual to mankind, we find the age of reason to succeed the age of faith. Science dwells in demonstration, and establishes principles from observed facts. Why may there not be a scientific criticism? To arrive at this the writer must ascend to that eminence in feeling where the opposing prejudices of mankind can not reach him; he must rise above praise or censure, he must dwell alone in the light of reason, he must be a child of Truth. Vain, however, would it be to expect to find himself or a public devoid of prejudice. This is impossible, for prejudice is produced by strong conviction. It is a feeling which, like a magnet, points as the electric force directs. To counteract this force is to destroy the magnet. It is those who think deeply, and have investigated thoroughly, who have an enlightened prejudice, and those who take upon authority what others tell them, who have a blind prejudice; but those who neither think nor investigate for themselves may truly be said to have no prejudice. My object is to convince the understanding and thereby build up a prejudice in favor of my proposition, which shall have a foundation of fact and argument, not to be removed, and to be but little disturbed. The world is my jury, they shall decide upon the facts. Lord Bacon gave the world a method, this method is also mine: Let facts reveal the inward truth of nature.
MYSTERY.
There is a scarcity of facts, a painful obscurity connected with that part of Mr. Paine's life before he removed to America. In fact, history has given him to the world, as almost beginning life on his arrival at Philadelphia, near the close of the year 1774. At this time, in the full stature of manhood, a little less than forty years of age, we find him without a personal history, without any events in life sufficient to predicate his after life upon. Can the great life to come rest on nothing? How came that mighty mind so fully stored with history, so deeply analytic, so skilled in literature and science, so perfect in the art of expressing ideas, so highly disciplined and finely equipped, ready to do battle against kings and ministers and in behalf of human rights? Whence came that mighty pen, which has often been acknowledged to have done more for human freedom than the sword of Washington? Why this dumb silence of history? There comes to us no thought of Mr. Paine worth recording prior to this time. The proud and imposing superstructure stands on a basis fit and substantial, but it rises out of the depths of mystery. And what little we do know of him prior to this time, aside from the great fact of his birth, is only a series of minor facts, with great blanks not even capable of being filled up by the imagination.
When a lad he went to school, but how long he went, or with what proficiency he studied, nobody knows. At sixteen he went aboard a privateer, but how long he served, or what made him quit the service, nobody knows. At twenty-seven he enters the employ of the English government as an exciseman, but was dismissed in a little over a year, nobody knows why. He now teaches school in London a year, but nobody knows with what success, or what were his accomplishments. He now quits London and letters, and the society of the learned, to return to the same petty office from which he had been dismissed, and for the trifling salary of less than fifty pounds a year. This office he now holds eight years more. Only a solitary ray of light illuminates this long period, when in the full tide of life. The chronicler renders it insignificant by a single dash of the pen. It is closed with another dismissal and dismal mystery. He now forever separates from his wife upon amicable terms, nobody knows why. During their after lives they neither of them marry, and never speak disrespectfully of each other. He leaves her all the property, and often sends her money during his after life. This obscure and twice dismissed English exciseman, it is said, now goes to talk with Benjamin Franklin, minister at the court of St. James, for several of the colonies; and, by what means nobody knows, obtains letters of the highest commendation, as an introduction to America, from her greatest and most honored