s praise of Lord Chatham knew no bounds; yet it
is well known that under another disguise Junius dealt far severer blows
against the patriot than he ever inflicted upon a man born, as he says,
to abet despotism in its hateful attempts to trample upon the people's
rights. Nothing can be more inconsistent than the accusations brought by
Junius against Lord Mansfield. In one and the same breath he charges him
with assuming an arbitrary power of doing right; so that if he does wrong
it lies only between him and his conscience; and with condescending to
evasive, indirect courses, in the temper of a quibbler. Now the Chief
Justice is something more than a lawyer, now considerably less. At one
moment he is setting common law at defiance, at another he is twisting
the law to the purposes of corruption, and taking refuge behind the forms
which he is expressly charged with heroically setting at defiance. Had
Lord Mansfield been less timorous, Junius might have been less daring. At
the close of one of his letters the reckless assailant writes "Beware how
you indulge the first emotions of your resentment. This paper is
delivered to the world, and cannot be recalled. The prosecution of an
innocent printer cannot alter facts nor refute arguments. Do not furnish
me with further materials against yourself." Another venomous diatribe
ends with a similar threat. Dare "to represent this charge as a contempt
of the authority of the House of Peers, and move their Lordships to
censure the publisher of this paper, and I affirm that you support
injustice by violence; that you are guilty of a heinous aggravation, of
your offense; and that you contribute your utmost influence to promote,
on the part of the highest court of judicature, a positive denial of
justice to the nation!" Junius traded up on the invincible infirmity of a
judge, who might have been destroyed by his weakness had he not been
upheld by his unsullied purity and fame.

The attacks of Junius were not without effect on Parliament. A motion was
made in the House of Commons for "a committee to inquire into the
proceedings of the judges in Westminster Hall, particularly in cases
relating to the liberty of the press." In the House of Lords Lord Chatham
and Lord Camden re-echoed the charges of the House of Commons, and while
the latter warned noble lords how they received the opinions in that
House of the "most experienced lawyers" upon questions of law, the
former, in his accustomed s