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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 July 2014
The immediate objective of the young Philip Francis in the series of pseudonymous letters signed Junius and Philo Junius, which were published at intervals in the Public Advertiser between 1769 and 1772 when the author was aged between twenty- nine and thirty-two, was to encompass the downfall of the Grafton administration and, subsequently, the North administration, in anticipation of their replacement by a ministry drawn from the opposition. Grafton went in 1770, but with the opposition falling into disarray, Junius failed to dislodge North and abandoned his campaign. No Junius letters appeared after January 1772. The letters were characterized by vituperative attacks on the personal conduct of ministers and the court. These attacks were accompanied by an acidulous commentary on political events as they unfolded. Ministers were accused of abusing the constitution, as often as not with the complicity of Parliament. Casting himself as a defender of the constitution Junius identified defects in the modus operandi of Parliament and the electoral system without himself bringing forward firm proposals for reform. It was not until he was drawn to comment on propositions advanced by the Society of the Supporters of the Bill of Rights in 1771 that Junius took up a position on parliamentary reform.
My thanks are due to Professor R. B. McDowell for reading this paper in draft and for comments and suggestions. I am also grateful to Professor P. J. Marshall for discussions on a number of points.
1 The authorship of Junius's Letters, for long a subject of speculation, was virtually decided in favor of Philip Francis by Alvar Ellegård in a computer based analysis of texts written under the separate signatures of Junius and Francis. Ellegård published the results in A Statistical Method for determining Authorship: the Junius Letters (Goteborg, 1962)Google Scholar and Who was Junius? (Stockholm, 1962)Google Scholar. The first authorized edition of The Letters of Junius in book form appeared in two volumes in 1772. The standard modern edition The Letters of Junius, ed. Cannon, John (Oxford, 1978)Google Scholar [hereafter cited as Junius Letters] was used for this paper and references are to this edition.
2 Many of the political issues raised by Junius had become passe but curiosity about his identity remained. The first sustained argument supporting Francis as the sole author of the Letters came in The Identity of Junius with a distinguished living Character established (1816) by Taylor, JohnGoogle Scholar.
3 Francis was First Clerk at the War Office from 1763 to 1772. He had little in the way of private means. However, his remittances from India amounted to about £65,000. See also my “India and the Personal Finances of Philip Francis,” English Historical Review 110 (February 1995): 122–31Google Scholar.
4 Christie, Ian R., Wilkes, Wyvill and Reform (London, 1962), p. 15Google Scholar; Cannon, John, Parliamentary Reform 1640-1832 (Cambridge, 1972), pp. 52–56Google Scholar.
5 SirNamier, Lewis and Brooke, John, The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1754-1790, 3 vols. (London, 1964)Google Scholar [hereafter cited as House of Commons 1754-1790], 3: 639–40Google Scholar.
6 Rude, George, Wilkes and Liberty (Oxford, 1962), pp. 61–62Google Scholar.
7 Dictionary of National Biography [hereafter cited as DNB], 19: 967-74; Thorne, Roland G., The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1790-1820, 5 vols. (London, 1986)Google Scholar [hereafter cited as House of Commons 1790-1820], 4: 235-37.
8 House of Commons 1754-1790, 3: 409–11Google Scholar.
9 Ibid., pp. 537-38.
10 Sutherland, Lucy S., “The City of London and the Opposition to Government, 1768-1774,” in Politics and Finance in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Newman, A. (London, 1984), p. 133Google Scholar.
11 Junius, , Letters, pp. 404–05Google Scholar.
12 Ibid., p. 275.
13 Ibid., pp. 405-10.
14 Christie, mikes, Wyvill and Reform, p. 40.
15 Chatham to Shelburne, 22 April 1771, Correspondence of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, ed. Taylor, W. S. and Pringle, J. H., 4 vols. (London, 1838-1840), 4: 156–57Google Scholar.
16 The Parliamentary History of England, from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, 36 vols. (London, 1806-1820)Google Scholar [hereafter cited as Parliamentary History], 17: 223.
17 Junius, , Letters, pp. 410–11Google Scholar. Francis displayed the same aversion to the populace of the manufacturing towns more than twenty years later referring to “the loose, licentious, profligate populace of great Towns, who belong to nothing but to the wicked hand that excites them to do mischief” (Francis to Cartwright, 14 April 1794, B[ritish] L[ibrary], Add. Mss. 40,763, ff. 226-27).
18 Ibid., pp. 417-19.
19 Ibid., pp. 421-23.
20 Ibid., pp. 275-76.
21 Ibid., pp. 405-14.
22 Ibid., p. 10.
23 The “Dedication” was written in October 1771 and seen by Wilkes before publication.
24 Lecky, W. E. H., A History of England in the Eighteenth Century, 8 vols. (London, 1878-1890), 3: 236Google Scholar.
25 Black, Eugene C., The Association: British Extraparliamentary Political Organization 1769-1793 (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), p. 276Google Scholar.
26 Junius, , Letters, p. 293Google Scholar.
27 Thomas Hardy, “A Sketch of the History of the London Corresponding Society,” B.L., Add. Mss. 27, 814, f. 32. For the case of George Rose see House of Commons 1790-1820, 5: 46Google Scholar.
28 Morning Chronicle, 21 March 1792.
29 Ibid., 22 March 1792. James Perry, editor of the Morning Chronicle, joined the Friends of the People.
30 Public Advertiser, 22 March 1792.
31 Morning Chronicle, 21 March 1792.
32 House of Commons 1790-1820, 4: 99–111Google Scholar.
33 Francis's accounts of his votes on reform between 1784 and 1792 are ambiguous. What did he mean when he told the Westminster electors that he had voted “against the proposition of Mr. Fox”? Possibly that Fox had voted with the minority for Pitt's reform proposals in 1785 whilst he had not. Again, how could Francis have voted twice against “different plans of reform” introduced by Pitt? He was not in Parliament until 1784 and could not have voted against Pitt's earlier proposals in 1782 and 1783. Pitt was sympathetic to Sawbridge's motion which may have been enough for Francis to put it down to Pitt. It has been suggested that some Foxites did not vote for reform in 1785 because the measure was Pitt's rather than because they disapproved of its contents (Christie, , Wilkes, Wyvill and Reform, p. 219Google Scholar). There was personal antipathy between Francis and Pitt. Moreover, while Junius would not have objected to Pitt's proposal to augment county representation he would have had serious objections about achieving it by suppressing rotten boroughs and reallocating their seats to the counties. By 1817 Francis was under the illusion that he had voted for Pitt's motions. Plan of a Reform in the Election of the House of Commons…republished by Sir Philip Francis (London, 1817), p. 8Google Scholar.
34 Parliamentary History, 29: 1339–40Google Scholar.
35 Brunsdon, P. J., “The Association of the Friends of the People 1792-96” (M.A. thesis, University of Manchester, 1961)Google Scholar offers a general account. For a view of the philosophy and political theory infusing the Society, see Hampsher-Monk, Ian, “Civic Humanism and Parliamentary Reform: the Case of the Society of the Friends of the People,” Journal of British Studies 18 (1979): 70–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The political background is drawn in Butterfield, H., “Charles James Fox and the Whig Opposition,” Cambridge Historical Journal 9 (1949): 302–15Google Scholar and Smith, Emest A., Lord Grey 1764-1845 (Oxford, 1990), pp. 38–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
36 House of Commons 1790-1820, 4: 371–73Google Scholar.
37 DNB, 12: 799-801.
38 House of Commons 1790-1820, 5: 384–99Google Scholar.
39 Ibid., pp. 528-45.
40 Holland, Lord, Memoirs of the Whig Party, 2 vols. (London, 1852-1854), 1: 13–16Google Scholar. Lady Holland set the occasion at a dinner given by the earl of Lauderdale. The Journal of Elizabeth Lady Holland (1791-1811), ed. the earl of Ilchester, 2 vols. (London, 1908), 1: 101Google Scholar.
41 House of Commons 1790-1820, 1: 134Google Scholar records those members of Parliament attached to the Friends of the People. The social background of the signatories to the Friends' initial declaration is touched on by Brunsdon, , Friends of the People 1792-96, pp. 71–80Google Scholar. They included at least eight associates of Francis connected with India.
42 House of Commons 1790-1820, 3: 693–96Google Scholar.
43 Elliot to Lady Elliot, 5 May 1792, Life and Letters of Sir Gilbert Elliot…l751-1806, ed. the countess of Minto, 3 vols. (London, 1874), 2: 20Google Scholar.
44 Parliamentary History, 29: 1340Google Scholar. The authorship “either solely or in a very principal degree” was ascribed to Mackintosh, James Sir, author of Vindiciae Gallicae (1791)Google Scholar in Memoirs of the Life of Sir James Mackintosh, ed. Mackintosh, R. J., 2 vols. (London, 1835), 1: 79Google Scholar, while in Reid, S. J., Life and Letters of the first Earl of Durham 1792-1840, 2 vols. (London, 1906), 1: 19, it was ascribed to William Henry LambtonGoogle Scholar.
45 Junius, , Letters, p. 410Google Scholar.
46 Political Papers, ed. Rev. Wyvill, Christopher, 6 vols. (York, [1794-1806])Google Scholar [hereafter cited as Wyvill, , Papers], 3: 128–44Google Scholar. Many, though by no means all, of the transactions and proceedings of the Society of the Friends of the People were reprinted in the collections published by Wyvill, a moderate reformer of long-standing, see Baylen, J. O. and Gossman, N. J., eds., Biographical Dictionary of Modern British Radicals, 3 vols, [in 4], (1979-1988), 1: 558–61Google Scholar and Dinwiddy, John R., “Christopher Wyvill and Reform, 1790-1820,” in Radicalism and Reform in Britain, 1780-1850 (London, 1992), pp. 31–62Google Scholar. For ease of reference Wyvill's collections are cited whenever applicable, otherwise reference is to the rather elusive and physically slight original material or to newspaper reports. In the former case, the British Library shelf mark is appended to assist in tracing the item.
47 Elliot to Lady Elliot, 7 May 1792, Life and Letters of Sir Gilbert Elliot, 2: 20Google Scholar.
48 Lord John Russell, William Baker, J. C. Curwen, Dudley North and John Courtenay. Their resignations were accepted at the Society's meeting on 9 June 1792.
49 Baylen, and Gossman, , Modern British Radicals, 1: 82–85Google Scholar.
50 Meeting, 12 May 1792, Wyvill, , Papers, 3: 149–58Google Scholar.
51 General meeting, 15 December 1792, ibid., pp. 175-87.
52 Tiemey to Grey, 4 November 1792, Grey Mss. quoted by Black, , The Association, pp. 289–91Google Scholar.
53 Wyvill, , Papers, 3: 189–251Google Scholar. Tiemey drew on Oldfield, T. H. B., An Entire and Complete His-tory…of the Boroughs of Great Britain (London, 1792)Google Scholar.
54 Ibid., pp. 251-69.
55 Parliamentary History, 30: 769–72Google Scholar.
56 Baylen, and Gossman, , Modern British Radicals, 1: 307–10Google Scholar.
57 Ibid., pp. 206-10.
58 A Letter of thanks…to Philip Francis, Esq., M.P. for his able speech in Parliament on the 10th of April, 1793 (1793).
59 The Speech of Mr. Francis…on the tenth of April… with a few Observations (1793).
60 The others were Grey, Lambton, Sheridan and Whitbread. Fox also spoke in favor (Parliamentary History, 30: 775–86Google Scholar).
61 Friends of the People, general meeting, 5 April 1794, address by Francis, p. 7, [in B.L., 8135. c. 61]. Fox had turned down a request by the Corresponding Society to present the petition because of his opposition to universal representation. It appears that, after Francis had returned “a polite and compliant Answer” to an approach, the deputation delivered the petition to him on the morning of the day that it was due to be presented to the Commons. There was, indeed, no time for it to be amended but it is difficult to believe that the Corresponding Society would have agreed to strike out what was one of its most fundamental objectives (London Corresponding Society, Journal and Minute Book, 9 May 1793, B.L., Add. Mss. 27,812. p. 43Google Scholar. See also Thale, Mary, ed. Selections from the Papers of the London Corresponding Society, 1792-1799 (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 63–64)Google Scholar.
62 For a good example, see Lord Mornington's speech in the Commons, 7 May 1793, Parliamentary History, 30: 849–78Google Scholar.
63 Ibid., cols 787-99; Wyvill, , Papers, 3: 269–92Google Scholar.
64 House of Commons 1790-1820, 5: 608–36Google Scholar.
65 Parliamentary History, 30: 840–49Google Scholar. Francis had paid £4,200 for his seat at Bletchingley in 1790 (House of Commons 1790-1820, 2: 379 and 3: 446-47Google Scholar). Ten years earlier, writing home from India to a friend about entering parliament, he had declared: “I will have nothing to do with the purchase of Boroughs. It is a business I neither like nor understand” (Francis to David Godfrey, 2 March 1780, British Library Oriental and India Office Collections, Mss. Eur. E17, p. 664).
66 Meeting, 25 May 1793, [in B.L., 8135. c. 57].
67 Baylen, and Gossman, , Modern British Radicals, 1: 446–47Google Scholar.
68 July 1793, see Second Report of the Committee of Secrecy on Seditious Practices, Appendix F, no. 5, in Parliamentary History, 31: 842Google Scholar.
69 General meeting, 8 March ]794,[in B.L., 8135. c. 61].
70 DNB, 20: 1179-94.
71 Draught of a Resolution and Plan, intended to be proposed to the Society of the Friends of the People [1794], [in B.L., E. 2162].
72 Wyvill to T. B. Hollis, 27 March 1794, Wyvill, , Papers, 3: 233Google Scholar. Francis also sought comments from Cartwright and William Belsham, the historian. (B.L., Add. Mss. 40,763, ff. 224-27). His consultations were wider than implied in Memoirs of Sir Philip Francis, ed. Parkes, Joseph and Merivale, Herman, 2 vols. (London, 1867), 2: 291Google Scholar.
73 T. B. Hollis to Wyvill, 11 April 1794, Wyvill, Papers, 3: 241Google Scholar.
74 General meeting, 5 April 1794 [in B.L., 8135. c. 61].
75 Extraordinary general meeting, 9 April 1794, Wyvill, , Papers, 5: ix–xiiGoogle Scholar.
76 Oeneral meeting, 31 May 1794, ibid., pp. xiii-xvi.
77 First Report of the Committee of Secrecy, Parliamentary History, 31: 489–91Google Scholar.
78 Ibid., cols. 882-84; see also cols. 864-70.
79 A Complete Collection of State Trials, ed. Howell, T. B., 33 vols. (London, 1816-1826), 24: 1104–09Google Scholar.
80 The John Horne of Junius days added the name Tooke in 1782.
81 State Trials, 25: 372–75Google Scholar. Home Tooke subsequently remarked that Francis spoke as if he scarcely knew him, whereas they had been acquainted for forty years (The Diary of Joseph Farington, ed. Garlick, K. and others, 16 vols. [New Haven, Conn., 1978-1984], 1: 277Google Scholar).
82 Wyvill, , Papers, 5: 253nGoogle Scholar.
83 Ibid., pp. xvi-xvii.
84 Wyvill to Francis, 20 December 1794, ibid., pp. 249-53.
85 Francis to Wyvill, 26 December 1794, ibid., pp. 256-60.
86 Wyvill to Francis, 17 January 1795, ibid., pp. 261-69.
87 Morning Chronicle, 7 January 1795.
88 Morning Post, 19 January 1795.
89 Francis to Wyvill, 20 January 1795, Wyvill, , Papers, 5: 279–82Google Scholar.
90 Wyvill to Francis, 28 January 1795, ibid, pp. 283-86.
91 House of Commons 1790-1820, 5: 109–11Google Scholar.
92 Parliamentary History, 31: 1161–69Google Scholar.
93 Francis to G. G. Ducarel, 27 May 1795, Gloucestershire Record Office, D2091, F16.1 am indebted to Mr. George McElroy for this reference.
94 Wyvill, , Papers, 5: xviii–xxivGoogle Scholar.
95 The Seditious Meetings Bill and the Treasonable Practices Bill. They were passed into law and became the “Two Acts” shortly after.
96 General meeting, 5 December 1795, Morning Chronicle, 7 December 1795.
97 Neither meeting appears to have been reported in the press, although both were advertised (Morning Chronicle, 1 December 1795 and 19 December 1795).
98 Ibid., 19 December 1795.
99 Ibid., 7 January 1796.
100 Ibid., 25 January 1796. The new association made little impact and quickly fell into desuetude. Yet, as late as 11 January 1798 Fox wrote to Lauderdale: “If the country stirs in distant parts, there ought to be some center of communication in London. The Whig Club is preferable to the friends of the People, but I think something may be found out better than either” (B.L., Add. Mss. 47,564, f. 28).
101 Francis and his colleague claimed that the borough franchise was vested in both freeman and inhabitant householders. The votes of the latter were rejected by the returning officers. A petition failed (House of Commons 1790-1820, 2: 178Google Scholar).
102 Morning Chronicle, 20 February 1797. Old differences had been resurrected by the unauthorized publication of Observations on the Conduct of the Minority written by Burke for the private edification of the Duke of Portland in 1793.
103 Francis to Cartwright, 2 April 1811, The Life and Correspondence of Major Cartwright, ed. Cartwright, F. D., 2 vols. (London, 1826), 2: 4Google Scholar.
104 Plan of a Reform in the Election of the House of Commons… 1795 (London, 1817)Google Scholar; also reprinted in The Pamphleteer 9 (1817): 545–61Google Scholar.
105 House of Commons 1790-1820, 3: 302–14Google Scholar.
106 Ibid., 4: 667-69.
107 Parliamentary Debates, 36: 747–48Google Scholar.
108 Junius, , Letters, p. 421Google Scholar.
109 This generalization requires some qualification. Francis was innately doctrinaire which is, perhaps, one reason why he never advanced far in British politics. In fresh fields overseas it was possible for governments to be more experimental, encouraging thought on the institutions of empire to go back to first principles. Bengal provided Francis with an opportunity for this kind of approach. Operating in more closely defined parameters in Britain he was obliged to take greater account of existing practice. Nevertheless, he had a penchant for calling on theory to support a case or argument. For instance, in the course of a speech in the Commons on Pitt's Commercial Treaty with France in 1786 he exasperated the House by providing “a general view” which assumed the aspect of a lecture with its allusions to historical principles and echoes of Montesquieu (Parliamentary History, 26: 417–22Google Scholar).
110 This theme was explored by Professor Marshall in the 1994 Creighton Lecture, Imperial Britain.
111 Christie, , Wilkes, Wyvill and Reform, p. 33Google Scholar.
112 Smith, , Lord Grey, p. 40Google Scholar.
113 Hampsher-Monk, , “Civic Humanism,” pp. 70–71Google Scholar.
114 Diaries and Correspondence of the Earl of Malmesbury, 4 vols. (London, 1844), 2: 472Google Scholar.
115 Elliot to Lady Elliot, 13 July 1797, Life and Letters of Sir Gilbert Elliot, 2: 412–13Google Scholar.
116 Grey, Charles, Some Account of the Life and Opinions of Charles, second Earl Grey (London, 1861), p. 11Google Scholar.
117 For example, Capel Lofft (Baylen, and Gossman, , Modern British Radicals, 1: 298–99Google Scholar) and T. B. Hollis (ibid., pp. 60-62).
118 Cobbett's Parliamentary Debates, 6: 511Google Scholar.
119 There is substance in the suggestion that Francis was able to maintain and justify his adherence to a middle course because his views on reform rested on a firm philosophical base, unlike those of many moderate reformers whose approach was pragmatic and who were easily swayed by current events and personal considerations (Hampsher-Monk, , “Civic Humanism,” p. 80Google Scholar).