2«"i S. No 118., Feb. 27. '68.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



161 



LONDON, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 11. 1868, 



THE CANDOR PAMPHLETS. 



(^Concltided from p. 141.) 



I shall now assume that these several pamphlets 

 were written by one and the same person, and 

 will bring together, so for as memory serves, the 

 opinions, current among contemporaries, as to who 

 was the writer. Of course, as the subjects dis- 

 cussed were questions of law, the writer, it was 

 presumed, must be a lawyer ; and as they wei'e 

 written with great ability, it followed, with the 

 public, that they must have been written by one 

 or other of the great lawyers known to be in Op- 

 position — therefore, and almost as a matter of 

 course, Pratt (afterwards Lord Camden) and 

 Dunning (afterwards Lord Ashburton) were sus- 

 pected and named. Opinion in favour of Dun- 

 ning was still farther strengthened when he 

 appeared as counsel for Almon in the action 

 brought against him for publishing Libels and 

 Warrants. Walpole, who speaks of Libels and 

 Warrants as " the finest piece that has been writ- 

 ten for liberty since Lord Somers," adds, it " is 

 said to be written by one Dunning, a lawyer 

 lately started up, who makes a great noise." Such 

 mere popular opinions are of little weight. 



Almon, the publisher of all the Candor pam- 

 phlets, would seem to be the best authority on 

 this subject ; but Almon certainly did not know 

 the writer at starting. In proof, on October 19, 

 1764, the following curious advertisement ap- 

 peared in the Public Advertizer : " This day is 

 published, ' A Letter from Candor to the Public 

 Advertizer,' " to which advertisement the follow- 

 ing was prefixed: "The letter dated Octo. 17th 

 was received yesterday. Every request is com- 

 plied with, and an answer is ready ; where shall 

 it be sent?" Almon possibly never knew the 

 writer. But he must have known more than the 

 public generally ; and though he may not have 

 had evidence sufiiclent to enable him to speak 

 positively as to authorship, he must have been 

 able, considering how long and how close the con- 

 nexion between them, to speculate with more pro- 

 bability than other people. Now Almon, in his 

 Life of Wilkes (i. 245.), says, " this celebrated 

 tract [^Libels and Warrants^ has been ascribed to 

 many gentlemen. But the real author has not 

 been named. He was a noble peer." In the same 

 work (ii. 95.) he says, this " very celebrated law 

 pamphlet .... has been ascribed to several per- 

 sons ; to Mr. Dunning, to Lord Camden, &c., but 

 the real author was a late Master in Chancery ; he 

 had much assistance from Lord Cuinden." Again, 

 in Anecdotes (i. 79.) he speaks of Libels and War- 

 rants as " one of the best, most able, and most 

 constitutional legal tracts, very generally ascribed 



to Lord Camden and Mr. Dunning; sometimes 

 distinctly, sometimes united. But a learned and 

 respectable Master in Chancery was not entirely 

 ignorant of the composition." The contradictions 

 in these statements are not great. Assume that 

 the pamphlet was written by the " late Master in 

 Chancery," Camden is said to have given him 

 " much assistance," and under such circumstances 

 Almon, not speaking critically, might say it was 

 written by "a noble peer," when he ought to have 

 said, " the writer was greatly assisted by a noble 

 peer." That Camden wrote these pamphlets, or 

 gave "much assistance," is not improbable from in- 

 ternal evidence. Camden, then Sir Charles Pratt, 

 was at the time Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, 

 and the writer goes out of his way to commend Lord 

 Somers, dLJudge^ for publishing his opinions ; and, 

 subsequently, very much out of his way to discuss 

 the question of copyright, and of course to enforce 

 Camden's opinion, which was opposed to Mansfield's. 

 The reference to a " late Master in Chancery " is 

 so specific that Almon, I think, must have had some 

 strong grounds for the opinion." Is it possible that 

 " the Master " and Lord Camden were half-bro- 

 thers ? Robert Pratt, Lord Camden's half-brother, 

 was a Master in Chancery, and as he died in 1775, 

 he was " a late Master in Chancery " when Almon 

 wrote. 



Another speculative opinion is too curious to be 

 passed without comment. If nothing should re- 

 sult, the inquiry, in its incidental bearings, will 

 repay the trouble of examination. 



It has been suspected, and the opinion is advo- 

 cated by Mr. Smith {Grenville Correspondence'), 

 that Junius was the writer of the Candor Pam- 

 phlets; and Dr. Busby, in his Arguments and Facts, 

 has whole pages of what he calls "parallel passages" 

 taken from Another Letter to Mr. Almon. It has 

 also been asserted, and by the best writer on the 

 subject, as the result of careful examination, that 

 the author of the letters of Junius was " the cele- 

 brated Dunning " (Heron's Junius, i. 68.), to whom, 

 as I have shown, the Candor pamphlets were very 

 generally attributed. Mr. Britton's theory also in- 

 cludes Dunning; and Dr. Good, in his Preliminary 

 Essay, observes : " Of all the reputed authors of 

 these celebrated addresses. Dunning (Lord Ash- 

 burton) offers the largest aggregate of claim in 

 his favour." It is not my intention to hazard an 

 opinion on this vexed question, but merely to 

 state the facts. Against these theories it may be 

 observed that Burke certainly did not know or 

 believe that the Pamphlets and the Letters were 

 written by the same person, for he drew a dis- 

 tinction between the writers, — did not know or be- 

 lieve that Dunning wrote the pamphlets, for at the 

 time when he expressed his regret that the writer 

 was not a member of either House, Dunning was, 

 and had been for two years, seated by his side on 

 the Opposition benches. Further and against the 



