rior knowledge and power, and had spirit enough to make Townshend at least sensible of the latter; a confidence in himself that was fortunate for the country."-(vol. ii., p. 345.)

"Wolfe himself was languishing with the stone, and a complication of disorders which fatigue and disappointment had brought upon him. Townshend and other officers had crossed him in his plans, but he had not yielded. Himself had been one of the warmest censurers of the miscarried expedition to Rochefort, and he had received this high command upon the assurance that no difficulties nor dangers should discourage him. His army wasted before his eyes by sickness; the season advanced fast which must put an end to his attempts, he had no choice remaining but in variety of difficulties.”— (vol. ii., p. 384.)

"In five days the town capitulated. Wolfe dead, and Monckton disabled, George Townshend signed the articles. He, and his friends for him, even attempted to ravish the honours of the conquest from Wolfe. Townshend's first letter said nothing in praise of him. In one to the Speaker of the House he went so far as to assume the glory of the last effort. His words wereWe determined on the 13th September to do what we ought to have done in the beginning; but in military operations it is never too late to reform.'—In other more private despatches Townshend was still more explicit. These he ordered to be shown to the Princess of Wales, the Duke of Newcastle, and Mr. Pitt. From the first he received great assurances of countenance; but the passion of gratitude, with which the nation was transported towards Wolfe's memory, overbore all attempts to lessen his fame. It was not by surviving him that it could be surpassed.”—(vol. ii., p. 387.)

"Lord Buckingham moved the address in the Lords, and flung in much panegyric on George Townshend, whose friends were now reduced to compose and publish in his name a letter in praise of Wolfe."-(vol. ii., p. 391.)

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'Pitt expatiated more largely on Townshend, who he said had gone unrequested whither the invited never came. This was far from being strictly fact. Townshend had gone unwillingly; sent even, it was believed, by Mr. Pitt, who wished to get rid of so troublesome a man."-(vol. ii., p. 394.)

Captain Knox, in his "Historical Journal of the Campaigns in North America, in the years 1757-60," (2 vols., 4to., 1769) endeavours to remove the impression that there had been any dissension between the officers of the army.

"This harmony and concord," he observes, "particularly among our General Officers, shone conspicuously in the successful event; notwithstanding mauy groundless insinuations and reports to the contrary; and if the

GENERAL TOWNSHEND.

35

reader is desirous to be still further ascertained of it, let him pay proper attention to Mr. Wolfe's incomparable letter of the 2nd instant, [already referred to] and to the orders which were published after his death by his successors, which must sufficiently obviate every illiberal suggestion, wickedly circulated by unthinking or designing men, for a motive of endeavouring to appear of consequence."

Captain Knox, it is evident from his own work, was of the Townshend party; and, by his very sedulous endeavours to hush the rumours of dissent, he becomes in fact an unwilling witness to the existence of the feeling which is so emphatically asserted by Walpole, and even more fully explained by the writer of the "Letter to a Brigadier-General."

*

Certainly the reports and orders issued by Townshend and Monckton after the battle, and confidently appealed to by Captain Knox, tend strongly to confirm the contrary opinion to that avowed by him. In the terms of capitulation, arranged by Townshend on the 18th of September, 1759, there was no reference to his commander, General Monckton. His report of the event on the 20th displayed no lack of pretension as to his own important share in the proceedings, whilst it conveyed but a scanty amount of praise to Wolfe, and maintained a total silence as to Barré and other officers of the staff. Again, in several General Orders issued within a few days afterwards, there is the same assumption of superiority. "It is the General's order";-" the General assures the army," &c.; without specifying Monckton by name. And in his final report dated the 22nd, he speaks of himself with a similar degree of arrogance; "I sent back the flag of truce," and then speaks of "the terms we granted."

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A laudatory Memoir of Townshend appeared in the fourth volume of Public Characters" in 1802,-some years previous to the publication of Walpole's Letters, and his History; and there, as well as in other biographical notices, we are told that the Brigadier-General differed from, and opposed Wolfe on many important questions.

On the 23rd of September, ten days after the battle, Monckton resumed the command, by a General Order commencing as follows: "General Monckton desires that all the officers in the Army will please to wear mourning for General Wolfe, their late Commanderin-Chief, such as is usual in the field ;" a sufficient proof, by comparison with Townshend's previous Orders, of the difference of their feelings on the subject.

From the preceding facts it is obvious that there were jealousies and party animosities in the army: and who would be so likely to espouse the cause of Wolfe, whilst suffering annoyance from a troublesome subordinate, as Major Barré? who, of all the officers present, had been most nearly connected officially with the deceased General, and who was moreover bound to him by every feeling of gratitude and honour. No person would be so likely to revenge the insult to the memory of his patron, as an officer whose hopes of advancement had been defeated by the selection of another to convey the despatches, and who, moreover, complained afterwards to Mr. Pitt, of the "neglect he had met with" since the battle of Quebec.

If any other motive be required for assigning the authorship of the "Letter to a Brigadier-General" to Major Barré, it may be reasonably supposed that his application to Mr. Pitt was referred by that minister to Townshend, who was then the only representative in England of the Quebec army; and that the cold and haughty negative which it received from the minister was influenced by some unfavourable report from that General. There was constant communication between England and America at that time; the season was favourable for speedy voyages ;* and there was time for Barré after the receipt of Pitt's reply, to write a short pamphlet such as that now referred to, and also for its transmission to England, so as to be printed and published early in September.

• Wolfe's last letter to Mr. Pitt, dated the 9th of September, 1759 (at a less favourable season), arrived in London on the 14th of October.

"LETTER TO A BRIGADIER-GENERAL."

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Mr. Simons, in his remarks upon the pamphlet, observes that, “it was written, if not by a soldier, at all events by a person well skilled in military affairs. In style, phraseology, and matter; in sarcastic irony, bold interrogation, stinging sarcasm, and severe personalities; in frequent taunts of treachery,' 'desertion,' and 'cowardice;' it so closely resembles the compositions of Junius, that the identity of their authorship scarcely admits of a doubt."

The "Refutation" of this letter, stated on its title-page to be the production of an Officer, requires no particular notice, unless the following passage may be regarded as corroborating the opinion that Major Barré was the author of the "Letter;"

"Where has this Pamphleteer been to find himself under the necessity of quoting this letter? He must not have been in England, surely; or must not have read the public papers, in which a little time after the news of the taking of Quebec, appeared the annexed funeral eulogium (a nobler or a more generous has never been penned), taken from a letter written by G-1 Td to a friend in London ;-'I am not ashamed to own to you that my heart does not exult in the midst of this success. I have lost but a friend in General Wolfe. Our country has lost a sure support and a perpetual honour. If the world were sensible at how dear a price we have purchased Quebec in his death, it would damp the general joy. Our best consolation is that Providence seemed not to promise that he should remain long among us. He was himself sensible of the weakness of his constitution, and determined to crowd into a few years actions that would have adorned length of life.'”

The reader will remember Walpole's assertion that Townshend's friends "composed and published in his name" a letter in praise of Wolfe; no doubt it was the one which is here cited but the above paragraph is merely referred to on account of the writer's inference that Townshend's assailant was absent from England.

:

Under these circumstances, there seems every reason to believe that BARRE wrote the "Letter to a Brigadier-General," and if that conclusion be adopted, it necessarily follows that he was JUNIUS.*

* Sir David Brewster has been engaged for some years past in investigating the authorship of Junius, and is inclined to ascribe it to Lachlan Maclean, whom he also regards as the author of the Quebec pamphlet. Maclean was certainly with the army in America, but there is no proof and

In resuming the narrative of Barré's proceedings from the time of his return to England (5th of October, 1760) with the Montreal despatches, it will be obvious that he then obtained ready access, and, at least, a courteous reception from the powerful statesman who ruled the destinies of England. He had, in fact, through the patronage of Sir Jeffery Amherst, an indisputable claim to that promotion which he had before solicited in vain. In a letter which he addressed to Mr. Pitt, on the 8th of October, (three days after his return), he expressed himself as "bound in the highest gratitude to him for the attention he had received;" and, although such language appears strong, yet, considering the relative position of the parties, it may be considered only as a compliment. The death of George the Second in the same month, and, perhaps still more, the dilatoriness of Lord Barrington, the Secretary at War (which furnished afterwards a theme for Junius), combined probably, with other causes, to defer his promotion till the 29th of January, 1761, when he obtained his commission as Lieutenant-Colonel.

It was about this time that Barré formed an intimate connection with the Earl of Shelburne, which continued to the close of his life; and as this intimacy forms an important element in the present inquiry, it will be necessary to trace its rise and progress as clearly as can now be done; although it unfortunately happens that we are not able to ascertain its origin, or the reasons for that close political and personal union between the nobleman and the military officer at that time and afterwards which produced so great an effect in the state of parties and of the nation.

very little probability of his having written the anonymous pamphlet. Sir David has frankly and fully communicated to me his views upon the subject, and although admiring the zeal and ingenuity with which he has pursued his inquiries, I am compelled to say that I cannot agree in his conclusions. The late George Chalmers, in an appendix to his "Supplemental Apology to the Believers in the Shakspeare Papers," has examined and confuted Maclean's pretensions to the authorship of the mystic Letters.