helmed with confusion, and
almost bereft of his faculties. But in truth, sir, I have left no room
for an accommodation with the piety of St. James'. My offenses are not
to be redeemed by recantation or repentance: on one side, our warmest
patriots would disclaim me as a burthen to their honest ambition; on the
other, the vilest prostitution, if Junius could descend to it, would
lose its natural merit and influence in the cabinet, and treachery be no
longer a recommendation to the royal favor."

There is not, among the dregs or scummings of human nature, a character
so false and vile as to write that, and then do as Francis did, or do as
the king of England did, if he believed him to be Junius. Nature rebels
at such an argument, founded on the facts of the case. It is by a
species of subterfuge, or literary legerdemain, exhibiting some facts
and hiding others, calling the attention to some trifling thing, and
then concealing the truth of the matter, is all that has ever rendered
the argument in favor of Francis of any consequence with the public.
There is more, for example, in the one word _Lord_, placed just in
front of Macaulay, than in any argument he may give on the subject. In
fact, that word imposes on the mind an authority not easily resisted. It
obscures the reason, quiets investigation, destroys the desire to
search, beguiles thought, puts the mind to sleep, and the reader, like a
young bird with eyes closed and mouth open, takes the food from out the
old one's mouth, gulps it down, and goes to sleep. It is thus the
student and the professor take, on authority, what they have no business
to, and do what they never would do, did their own souls not bow basely
at the shrine of some literary Baal. It is thus in politics, religion,
history, law, philosophy, criticism, belles-lettres, science--whichever
way we turn we find the false god and his worshipers. When the student
and the professor come to find Mr. Macaulay to be a man of much talent
in a certain direction, but by no means a literary god to be worshiped
as infallible, they will lose faith in his assertions which come without
proof.

It had been my intention to throw a few hints into the Introduction upon
external and internal evidence, as it is called, but I concluded to
defer it till now, because the remarks and the illustrations would then
be thrown together.

In a criticism of this kind, but little confidence can be placed in
external evidence, because