Philip Francis (?) (1740–1818)

AMONG the letters of “Junius,”—each a masterpiece of vituperation,—that of July 8th, 1769, to the Duke of Grafton is unapproachable. It is as hard to read it without feeling that its victim must have deserved it as it is to escape regret at the necessity of even suspecting the depths of infamy possible for those who aspire to control others by force and fraud. Of all who have studied politics since Machiavelli showed scoundrels how to make a public policy of their worst villainy, Junius alone has adequately expressed the indignant contempt every honest man who knows such politics must feel for such politicians. Swift, who approaches Junius in knowledge of the subject, broke his heart and died, wrecked in mind and body, by the “cruel indignation” which alone could have endowed the author of the “Junius” letters with the transcendent ability he displays in attacking the great criminals of the commercial and political combination which was then using the power of the oppressed English people to rob the people of India. To appreciate the full significance of the domestic politics which provoked the letters of “Junius,” the reader who has the letter to the Duke of Grafton fresh in mind, must take up Burke’s speech opening the bribery charges against Hastings and read on until he has learned how the imposts laid on Hindoo farmers by the allies and agents of the British East India Company were collected by the use of torture. If, as Macaulay supposes, Sir Philip Francis wrote the letters of “Junius,” he had ample opportunity to realize abroad the meaning of the corruption he had denounced at home, for he was in India from 1774 to 1780 as a member of the council appointed to check Hastings. He was born at Dublin, October 22d, 1740, his father, Rev. Philip Francis, being the author of a celebrated translation of Horace which, in spite of some pardonable pedantry, remains still the English masterpiece of its class. With this family tradition of ability, the younger Francis developed in his own right, talent of a high order. From being a junior clerk in the office of the Secretary of State in 1756, he rose in 1774 to be one of the Council for India. On his return from the East, he was elected to Parliament (1784) where, as in his writings, he showed himself a formidable opponent of those he considered opponents of justice and progress. He died December 23d, 1818. The argument for his authorship of “Junius” has been repeatedly made and often controverted. Macaulay’s statement of the evidence in his essay on Warren Hastings is an interesting one and as nearly convincing, no doubt, as can be made where the evidence is wholly circumstantial.