Junius' Letter to the king is also an example of the same method. There is, first, the bill of rights, and then the indictment. We find here the same strategy, which takes possession of the mind of the people, the same method to place the writer above and beyond selfish motives, the same foundation of principles, the same superstructure of argument, and the same method of bringing the reader to the conclusions. Herein we find policy.

The policy of Mr. Paine made him extremely cautious, and he weighed well the consequences of speaking to the public, studying especially the proper time. This was the habit of Junius also. I will now give a few examples: When the civil laws of England had been trampled on by the military, in the case of General Gansel, Junius delayed speaking about it. He says: "Had I taken it up at an earlier period, I should have been accused of an uncandid, malignant precipitation, as if I watched for an unfair advantage against the ministry, and would not allow them a reasonable time to do their duty. They now stand without excuse."—Let. 30. He then proceeds to strike the ministry "hip and thigh." In Letter 44 he also mentions the fact of having been silent, not from a "shameful indifference," but because he had determined to "not deliver a hasty opinion on a matter of so much delicacy and importance."

The same constitutional caution is exhibited in Mr. Paine. Upon national honor, in Crisis xii, dated May, 1782, he says: "In March, 1780, I published part of the Crisis, No. viii, in the newspapers, but did not conclude it in the following papers, and the remainder has lain by me till the present day. There appeared about that time some disposition in the British cabinet to cease the further prosecution of the war, and as I had formed my opinion that whenever such a design should take place, it would be accompanied by a dishonorable proposition to America respecting France, I had suppressed the remainder of that number, not to expose the baseness of any such proposition." He now incorporates it in this number, and then follows with one of the noblest productions on national honor which it has been the fortune of man to write.

I now give an opinion on the principles of the English constitution:

Paine.Junius.
"A government on the principles on which constitutional governments arising out of society are established, can not have the right of altering itself. If it had, it would be arbitrary. It might make itself what it pleased; and whenever such a right is set up, it shows that there is no constitution. The act by which the English parliament empowered itself to sit for seven years, shows there is no constitution in England. It might, by the same self-authority, have to sat any greater number of years, or for life."—R. of M., part i. "There can not be a doctrine more fatal to the liberty and property we are contending for, than that which confounds the idea of a supreme and an arbitrary legislature.... If the majority can disfranchise ten boroughs, why not twenty—why not the whole kingdom? Why should not they make their own seats in parliament for life? When the septennial act passed, the legislature did what, apparently and palpably, they had no power to do."—Let. 68.

Although the above doctrine that the people, not the legislature, are supreme, is not new, yet it was rarely asserted in the time of Paine, and renders the above parallel strong and peculiar. Even the same language is used in making the same application to the septennial act, which might as well have empowered the members of parliament to sit for life.

Here is a parallel on the opinion of the jobbing spirit of courtiers: