In 1813, forty-six years after the first letter of Junius appeared, John Taylor announced that Dr. Francis and his son Philip were the joint authors; but in 1816 Taylor concluded that Philip alone did the work. When Taylor apprised Sir Philip of this wonderful discovery for the doughty knight, apparently, was not aware that he had written these letters he denied having written them, calling Taylor's work "a wild goose chase and a waste of time," and added: "He would be a lucky person indeed, who could find out Junius; why, it would make a man's fortune." Sir Philip Francis died in 1818. Probably he would have been forgotten had not Lord Macauley in 1841 given him posthumous fame in his essay on Warren Hastings by asserting that Francis was Junius, thus: "The evidence is, we think, such as would support a verdict, in a civil, nay, in a criminal proceeding." In the preface of his essays Macauley says that he often wrote "at a distance from all books," and had to "trust to his memory for facts, dates and quotations; and sent manuscript to the printer without reading them over." Such method of writing is hardly conducive to accuracy; besides that, Macauley was not a philosopher; he was a word painter; rhetoric was his forte. He reasoned this way: The Junius letters were written by a man who was sarcastic, full of invective and had a grudge; Francis answered to these requirements; therefore, Sir Philip Francis was Junius.

A chain of circumstantial evidence is no stronger than its weakest link. Macauley fails to show Francis' qualifications. Born October 22, 1740, in Dublin, Philip Francis was 26 years old when the first letter ascribed to Junius appeared. From 1763 to 1772 he was a clerk in the war office, having a family to support and no means except a salary of $2000 a year. Welbore Ellis procured this clerkship for Francis; note the base ingratitude if Francis was Junius, for in a letter of April 3rd, 1770, Junius said of Ellis: "Whether he makes or suppresses a motion, he is equally sure of his disgrace. North, Gower, Ellis-their very names are a satire upon all government, and I defy the gravest of our chaplains to read their names without laughing."

There is no evidence that Francis ever wrote anything of permanent value. If he was Junius where did this young clerk acquire such polished, epigrammatic style? Where did he obtain the erudition, the exact and extensive legal knowledge, the ripe worldly experience, and mature philosophy of life, so clearly discernible in the letters of Junius? Unless it be that—like Minerva leaping forth from the brain of Jupiter, mature in wisdom and of perfect grace and beauty-he blazed into the literary world as a meteor with these lustrous qualifications. Francis was a successful office-seeker, a politician, obsequious and ambitious for a title; but he he was not Junius-the brilliant rhetorician, the greatest master of sarcasm and antithesis; the most forceful writer of his day.

When Woodfall published the collected letters in 1772, he offered one-half the proceeds to Junius who refused to accept; but Junius insisted upon repaying "from a competent purse" the expense, about $800.00, incurred by Woodfall in the libel suit of Rex v. Woodfall, 1 Lofft, 776. On March 5, 1772, Junius once more refused all gain from his letters, writing to Woodfall: "What you say about the profit is very handsome. As for myself, be assured that I am far above all pecuniary views; let all your views in life be directed to a solid, however moderate independence, without it no man can be happy, nor even honest." Then Junius suggested that Woodfall donate the profits to some charity. What is the probability that Francis, working on a salary, would have refused these profits; or that he had the time, inclination or ability, considering his age, employment and circumstances, to write these letters? Francis was 76 years old before he was ever suspected of being Junius. The fact is, at an advanced age he became a widower; then he married a young woman, who was ambitious that his name should go down to posterity as "Junius," probably for a purpose of self-aggrandizement.

However, Junius was prophetic. He wrote to Woodfall: "I am the sole depositary of my own secret, and it shall perish with me." We have a parallel case in the Federalist which appeared anonymously, of which Hamilton, Madison and Jay are the reputed authors, under the name of "Pub

lius." In comparison, John Randolph of Roanoke, a brillian, ironical character, ambitious to serve his country, may be regarded as on the order of Junius, Byron, in "The Vision of Judgment," refers to him:

''Call Junius! From the crowd a shadow stalk'd,
And several people swore from out the press,
They knew him perfectly; and one would swear
He was his father; upon which another

Was sure he was his mother's cousin's brother.

"Another, that he was a duke, or knight,
An orator, a lawyer, or a priest,

A nabob, a man-mid-wife; but the wight
Mysterious changed his countenace at least

As oft as they their minds; though in full sight

He stood, the puzzle only was increased."

As a literary character he is unique. His classic work

is destined to live for ages. Does it matter what his real name was? It is his genius, his copious knowledge, his fearless independence, his keen satire, although at times coarse, his elegant and forceful diction, and his well sustained and sonorous periods that we ever admire. In the language of the stately Latin of which he had been a close and diligent student, and upon which he based his splendid style, we may exclaim as a meager tribute to the real Junius, whatever his name-Stat magni nominis umbra! Therehe stands the shadow of a mighty name!

FRED. H. PETERSON.

THE COUNTRY LAWYER.

BY A. T. DUMM.*

"I would have it understood that what I shall have to say concerning the country lawyer is intended as no discrimination against, nor reflection upon, nor disparagement of, the lawyer who, through choice or necessity, practices his profession in the great city. I speak of the country lawyer, because I know him, because I am associated with him, and because, with his virtues eliminated and his faults exaggerated, I am he.

"May I be pardoned for observing that, while the city lawyer may be a professional man, or a business man, or, as is often the case, a successful combination of both, the country lawyer is no mere individual, no single entity working out a distinctive destiny-the country lawyer is an Institution, spiritual, educational and eleemosynary. After a period of probation spent in a law school or a charitable law office, during which he wanders through a maze of legal subtleties and wonders what it is all about, he is, by act of the Legislature and the grace of Providence, admitted to the Bar. Having a license to practice law, he is, ex virtuti officii, presumed, by the exacting and indiscriminating public upon whom he must perforce practice, to know not only the law, but all the handmaidens of the law, including sociology and anthropology, medicine and metaphysics, philosophy and theology, politics and finance, history and hygiene, revenue and taxation, married women's rights, the aurora borealis and the procession of the equinoxes. If he knew as much as he is presumed to know, and as, in rare instances, he presumes to know, he would incorporate, were it not that the law requires that a corporation shall have at least three shareholders, a requirement impossible for him to meet, since the two others do not exist who could be induced to take any stock in him. Fortunately, the presumption heretofore referred to is not a conclusive but a

*An address recently delivered by A. T. Dumm, of Jefferson City, Mo., to the Missouri Bar Association.

rebuttable one, and it is usually overturned on his first appearance at the Bar.

"The country lawyer, as I conceive him, is a personified vicissitude. The limitations of the constituency from which he draws his business are such that he is afforded no opportunity to specialize, and he must be ready and willing, if he is not able, to meet all comers, on all subjects, at all times, in all courts, and under all circumstances. He fulfils the definition of a vicissitude, in that he is at once the subject and the victim of irregular change-not a change of raiment, nor a change of diet, but a change in the character of his practice. To-day, he defends a speed maniac in the police court; to-morrow, he tries a damage suit in the court of general jurisdiction; and the next day, in the appellate tribunal, he racks his weary brain on the all-important and heaven-born distinction between the record. proper and the bill of exceptions. Having, ex necessitate, taken all knowledge to be his province, he begins early to sympathize with the great Greek scholar, who, at the close of a long life devoted to the study of one Greek word, regretted that he had not confined his studies entirely to the dative case of that same word. If, in these exigencies, he occasionally finds himself lost in a labyrinth of bewilderment, he may conceal his agitation and his lack of learning by an exhibition of the wonderful resourcefulness of the legal mind, which, according to a keen observer, chiefly displays itself by illustrating the obvious, explaining the evident, and expatiating on the commonplace. It was Charles the First, I believe, who gave it as his opinion that lawyers do not know more law than other people, but that they only know where to find the law; but if that ill-fated monarch had lived to cammine the lack of the Cession Acts of Missouri in 1919, he would have confessed that even this delimitation of the lawyer was not entirely accurate.

"The country lawyer in embyro was assured by Blackstone, in whom, in his unsophisticated innocence, he had implicit confidence, that the law was divided into two classes only, the written and the unwritten law. A rude awakening awaited him, for he was to discover that the classification of the law furnishes no key to its multifold ramifica