LORD GEORGE SACKVILLE'S LIFE CONTINUED, FROM HIS TRIAL TO HIS BEING APPOINTED SECRETARY OF STATE. The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues. Twist ye-twine ye-ever so Shakspeare. Sir Walter Scott. T CHAPTER X. The nature of circumstantial evidence explained.—Lord George retires to his seat in Kent.-Is appointed a Privy-councillor and one of the Vice-treasurers of Ireland in 1765.—His perfect leisure found to agree with Mr. Barker's conclusion respecting the situation of Junius.-His age shewn to correspond with Dr. Good's opinion of the age of Junius.-Junius's contradictory assertions with regard to his being a soldier proved to be consistent with Lord George's peculiar situation.-Lord George resident in London during the time the Letters were written. The position of his house at Kew enabled him to obtain intelligence of what was passing in the King's palace. -The opinion of the author of "Junius Unmasked" respecting Lord George's qualification for writing the Letters of Junius. -Lord George treated as the author of the Letters of Junius by "Titus."-Junius's attack on Lord Granby consistent with Lord George being the author.-The general suspicion of his being Junius further shewn from Chatterton's Poems.— His Lordship takes the name of GERMAIN.-Anecdote of his Lordship and a young clergyman.-Lord Germain again makes a conspicuous figure in the House of Commons in 1770.-Junius's antipathy to Sir Fletcher Norton and Lord Mansfield shewn to be also entertained by Lord Germain.— That his Lordship, as well as Junius, was the friend of Alderman Sawbridge.-His Lordship's defence of Woodfall, and disregard of Mr. Horne, when brought before the House of Commons for a libel.-Junius and Lord Germain both proved to be great admirers of Mr. G. Grenville's political principles.-Lord Germain supports the Ministers in their coercive measures against America. LORD GEORGE SACKVILLE CONTINUED. Whenever a fact is touched upon, there I fix. Junius. As we now approach the period when the Letters of Junius appeared, it becomes necessary to detail with some degree of minuteness, the evidence which has been adduced to prove the identity of Lord George Sackville with the author of those Letters. This evidence, it is obvious from the nature of the case, cannot be direct and positive, but must necessarily be presumptive, or circumstantial. It may, therefore, not be out of place to offer a few remarks on the nature of such evidence. Circumstantial evidence, by the law of England, is admissible both in civil and criminal cases; for the modes of reasoning and drawing conclusions from facts must be uniform. When direct facts cannot be supplied, as must continually happen in some of the worst species of crime, reasonable minds will necessarily form their judgment on circumstances, and act on the probabilities of the case: indeed, the whole system of human action depends on probability; and "as mathematical, or absolute certainty (to use the words of Lord Mansfield) is seldom to be attained in human affairs, reason and public utility require that Judges, and all mankind, in forming their opinion of the truth of facts, should be regulated by the superior number of the probabilities on the one side or the other, whether the amount of these probabilities be expressed in words and arguments, or by figures and numbers." Lord Kennet, in delivering his judgment in the celebrated Douglas cause, says:— "Of all evidence to prove a crime, circumstantial evidence is the most convincing, and what is more, the least suspicious. In judging of such a proof, the whole circumstances must be taken together; some by themselves may appear trivial, which when joined to others, appear exceedingly material.” It has been further remarked of this species of evidence, that when the proofs are dependent on each other, or when all the proofs are dependent upon one, the number of proofs neither increase nor diminish the probability of the fact; for the force of the whole is not greater than the force of that on which they depend, and if this fail, they all fall to the ground. But when the proofs are distinct and independent of each other, the probability of the fact increases in proportion to the number of the proofs, for the falsehood of one does not diminish the veracity of another. After his disgrace, Lord George Sackville retired to his paternal mansion at Knowle in Kent; and from the year 1760 to 1765, there appears an interregnum in his public life, though he continued member of parliament for Hythe. In the year 1765 he was nominated by George the Third a member of the Privy-council, and appointed one of the Vice-treasurers of Ireland; but this last situation his Lordship resigned a few months afterwards, upon the DUKE OF GRAFTON being appointed to the Treasury. These appointments gave him an opportunity of knowing every minute circumstance connected with Irish affairs, all the movements of the Ministry, all that was passing in the immediate circle of the Court, as well as in the various departments of the army, the navy, and the foreign office. During his retirement, Lord George had ample leisure in solitude to brood over his wrongs and injuries, and of 'nursing his wrath to keep it warm," as well as to improve himself in composition, and amass those stores of legal and constitutional knowledge which the Letters of Junius exhibit; indeed, his situation seems exactly to have corresponded with that of Junius, as described by Mr. E. H. Barker, who says (p. 141):-" It may be affirmed beyond all contradiction, and I particularly invite the attention of the reader to the importance and novelty of the observation, because it is decisive against the claim of Sir Philip Francis and several other persons, that the author could not have had leisure for any other pursuit, or any other business, while he was engaged in writing these Letters: he must have lived in the retirement of his own presence, confining his society, when he could admit society, chiefly to those few individuals who furnished him with facts, and incidents, and circumstances, or in any way favoured his views and facilitated his labours. In solitary majesty, in oriental seclusion, in the realm of silence, and in the land of oblivion, he was "left at large to his own dark designs," till, like another Aurungzebe, he came forth, "fierce from his lair to lap the blood of kings,"-with Titanian look denouncing "Desperate revenge and battle dangerous till arrayed at length in "Gorgon terrors," and armed with infernal thunder, he, as from "a firmament of hell, spouted his cataracts of fire." |