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Junius, Philip Francis and Parliamentary Reform*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 July 2014
Extract
The immediate objective of the young Philip Francis in the series of pseudonymous letters signed Junius and Philo Junius, which were published at intervals in the Public Advertiser between 1769 and 1772 when the author was aged between twenty- nine and thirty-two, was to encompass the downfall of the Grafton administration and, subsequently, the North administration, in anticipation of their replacement by a ministry drawn from the opposition. Grafton went in 1770, but with the opposition falling into disarray, Junius failed to dislodge North and abandoned his campaign. No Junius letters appeared after January 1772. The letters were characterized by vituperative attacks on the personal conduct of ministers and the court. These attacks were accompanied by an acidulous commentary on political events as they unfolded. Ministers were accused of abusing the constitution, as often as not with the complicity of Parliament. Casting himself as a defender of the constitution Junius identified defects in the modus operandi of Parliament and the electoral system without himself bringing forward firm proposals for reform. It was not until he was drawn to comment on propositions advanced by the Society of the Supporters of the Bill of Rights in 1771 that Junius took up a position on parliamentary reform.
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Footnotes
*
My thanks are due to Professor R. B. McDowell for reading this paper in draft and for comments and suggestions. I am also grateful to Professor P. J. Marshall for discussions on a number of points.
References
1 The authorship of Junius's Letters, for long a subject of speculation, was virtually decided in favor of Philip Francis by Alvar Ellegård in a computer based analysis of texts written under the separate signatures of Junius and Francis. Ellegård published the results in A Statistical Method for determining Authorship: the Junius Letters (Goteborg, 1962)Google Scholar and Who was Junius? (Stockholm, 1962)Google Scholar. The first authorized edition of The Letters of Junius in book form appeared in two volumes in 1772. The standard modern edition The Letters of Junius, ed. Cannon, John (Oxford, 1978)Google Scholar [hereafter cited as Junius Letters] was used for this paper and references are to this edition.
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19 Ibid., pp. 421-23.
20 Ibid., pp. 275-76.
21 Ibid., pp. 405-14.
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44 Parliamentary History, 29: 1340Google Scholar. The authorship “either solely or in a very principal degree” was ascribed to Mackintosh, James Sir, author of Vindiciae Gallicae (1791)Google Scholar in Memoirs of the Life of Sir James Mackintosh, ed. Mackintosh, R. J., 2 vols. (London, 1835), 1: 79Google Scholar, while in Reid, S. J., Life and Letters of the first Earl of Durham 1792-1840, 2 vols. (London, 1906), 1: 19, it was ascribed to William Henry LambtonGoogle Scholar.
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48 Lord John Russell, William Baker, J. C. Curwen, Dudley North and John Courtenay. Their resignations were accepted at the Society's meeting on 9 June 1792.
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53 Wyvill, , Papers, 3: 189–251Google Scholar. Tiemey drew on Oldfield, T. H. B., An Entire and Complete His-tory…of the Boroughs of Great Britain (London, 1792)Google Scholar.
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58 A Letter of thanks…to Philip Francis, Esq., M.P. for his able speech in Parliament on the 10th of April, 1793 (1793).
59 The Speech of Mr. Francis…on the tenth of April… with a few Observations (1793).
60 The others were Grey, Lambton, Sheridan and Whitbread. Fox also spoke in favor (Parliamentary History, 30: 775–86Google Scholar).
61 Friends of the People, general meeting, 5 April 1794, address by Francis, p. 7, [in B.L., 8135. c. 61]. Fox had turned down a request by the Corresponding Society to present the petition because of his opposition to universal representation. It appears that, after Francis had returned “a polite and compliant Answer” to an approach, the deputation delivered the petition to him on the morning of the day that it was due to be presented to the Commons. There was, indeed, no time for it to be amended but it is difficult to believe that the Corresponding Society would have agreed to strike out what was one of its most fundamental objectives (London Corresponding Society, Journal and Minute Book, 9 May 1793, B.L., Add. Mss. 27,812. p. 43Google Scholar. See also Thale, Mary, ed. Selections from the Papers of the London Corresponding Society, 1792-1799 (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 63–64)Google Scholar.
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63 Ibid., cols 787-99; Wyvill, , Papers, 3: 269–92Google Scholar.
64 House of Commons 1790-1820, 5: 608–36Google Scholar.
65 Parliamentary History, 30: 840–49Google Scholar. Francis had paid £4,200 for his seat at Bletchingley in 1790 (House of Commons 1790-1820, 2: 379 and 3: 446-47Google Scholar). Ten years earlier, writing home from India to a friend about entering parliament, he had declared: “I will have nothing to do with the purchase of Boroughs. It is a business I neither like nor understand” (Francis to David Godfrey, 2 March 1780, British Library Oriental and India Office Collections, Mss. Eur. E17, p. 664).
66 Meeting, 25 May 1793, [in B.L., 8135. c. 57].
67 Baylen, and Gossman, , Modern British Radicals, 1: 446–47Google Scholar.
68 July 1793, see Second Report of the Committee of Secrecy on Seditious Practices, Appendix F, no. 5, in Parliamentary History, 31: 842Google Scholar.
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70 DNB, 20: 1179-94.
71 Draught of a Resolution and Plan, intended to be proposed to the Society of the Friends of the People [1794], [in B.L., E. 2162].
72 Wyvill to T. B. Hollis, 27 March 1794, Wyvill, , Papers, 3: 233Google Scholar. Francis also sought comments from Cartwright and William Belsham, the historian. (B.L., Add. Mss. 40,763, ff. 224-27). His consultations were wider than implied in Memoirs of Sir Philip Francis, ed. Parkes, Joseph and Merivale, Herman, 2 vols. (London, 1867), 2: 291Google Scholar.
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78 Ibid., cols. 882-84; see also cols. 864-70.
79 A Complete Collection of State Trials, ed. Howell, T. B., 33 vols. (London, 1816-1826), 24: 1104–09Google Scholar.
80 The John Horne of Junius days added the name Tooke in 1782.
81 State Trials, 25: 372–75Google Scholar. Home Tooke subsequently remarked that Francis spoke as if he scarcely knew him, whereas they had been acquainted for forty years (The Diary of Joseph Farington, ed. Garlick, K. and others, 16 vols. [New Haven, Conn., 1978-1984], 1: 277Google Scholar).
82 Wyvill, , Papers, 5: 253nGoogle Scholar.
83 Ibid., pp. xvi-xvii.
84 Wyvill to Francis, 20 December 1794, ibid., pp. 249-53.
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86 Wyvill to Francis, 17 January 1795, ibid., pp. 261-69.
87 Morning Chronicle, 7 January 1795.
88 Morning Post, 19 January 1795.
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91 House of Commons 1790-1820, 5: 109–11Google Scholar.
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93 Francis to G. G. Ducarel, 27 May 1795, Gloucestershire Record Office, D2091, F16.1 am indebted to Mr. George McElroy for this reference.
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95 The Seditious Meetings Bill and the Treasonable Practices Bill. They were passed into law and became the “Two Acts” shortly after.
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97 Neither meeting appears to have been reported in the press, although both were advertised (Morning Chronicle, 1 December 1795 and 19 December 1795).
98 Ibid., 19 December 1795.
99 Ibid., 7 January 1796.
100 Ibid., 25 January 1796. The new association made little impact and quickly fell into desuetude. Yet, as late as 11 January 1798 Fox wrote to Lauderdale: “If the country stirs in distant parts, there ought to be some center of communication in London. The Whig Club is preferable to the friends of the People, but I think something may be found out better than either” (B.L., Add. Mss. 47,564, f. 28).
101 Francis and his colleague claimed that the borough franchise was vested in both freeman and inhabitant householders. The votes of the latter were rejected by the returning officers. A petition failed (House of Commons 1790-1820, 2: 178Google Scholar).
102 Morning Chronicle, 20 February 1797. Old differences had been resurrected by the unauthorized publication of Observations on the Conduct of the Minority written by Burke for the private edification of the Duke of Portland in 1793.
103 Francis to Cartwright, 2 April 1811, The Life and Correspondence of Major Cartwright, ed. Cartwright, F. D., 2 vols. (London, 1826), 2: 4Google Scholar.
104 Plan of a Reform in the Election of the House of Commons… 1795 (London, 1817)Google Scholar; also reprinted in The Pamphleteer 9 (1817): 545–61Google Scholar.
105 House of Commons 1790-1820, 3: 302–14Google Scholar.
106 Ibid., 4: 667-69.
107 Parliamentary Debates, 36: 747–48Google Scholar.
108 Junius, , Letters, p. 421Google Scholar.
109 This generalization requires some qualification. Francis was innately doctrinaire which is, perhaps, one reason why he never advanced far in British politics. In fresh fields overseas it was possible for governments to be more experimental, encouraging thought on the institutions of empire to go back to first principles. Bengal provided Francis with an opportunity for this kind of approach. Operating in more closely defined parameters in Britain he was obliged to take greater account of existing practice. Nevertheless, he had a penchant for calling on theory to support a case or argument. For instance, in the course of a speech in the Commons on Pitt's Commercial Treaty with France in 1786 he exasperated the House by providing “a general view” which assumed the aspect of a lecture with its allusions to historical principles and echoes of Montesquieu (Parliamentary History, 26: 417–22Google Scholar).
110 This theme was explored by Professor Marshall in the 1994 Creighton Lecture, Imperial Britain.
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118 Cobbett's Parliamentary Debates, 6: 511Google Scholar.
119 There is substance in the suggestion that Francis was able to maintain and justify his adherence to a middle course because his views on reform rested on a firm philosophical base, unlike those of many moderate reformers whose approach was pragmatic and who were easily swayed by current events and personal considerations (Hampsher-Monk, , “Civic Humanism,” p. 80Google Scholar).