both Houses of Assembly. This was his last outward voyage, and was destined to convey him to a theater of still more extended usefulness to the colonies.

That Pownall left traducers behind him is evident. By some of the rigid folk in Boston he was thought too gay in his demeanor and too fond of society. The stern puritan, Samuel Adams, the "man of the town meeting," called him the "fribble "—an almost obsolete word for " fop." That Pownall always carried himself as befitted a man of rank by the standard of his time, Cradock, a memoir writer and traveler of the last century, plainly affirms. Describing him, on a subsequent visit to France, Cradock says, "the Governor was splendid and magnificent in his dress"a statement confirmed by the Lord Orford portrait duly befrilled and powdered, yet withal singularly high-bred and thoughtful looking. In these externals he merely conformed to the requirements of European taste in the last century, and if he exceeded them, it is certain that they did not affect his mental character or the learning and dignity which his contemporaries concede to him, and his writings prove for him. On his safe return from Boston to England, Pownall concluded not to enter on his Carolinian appointment. He stood for Parliament, and was returned for Tregoney, in Cornwall. But being appointed Director-General of Control in Germany, a high office in the commissariat of the active forces, he soon retired from Parliament. While in Germany, he was the subject of a libel, published in Wilkes' notorious North Briton, accusing him of passing inferior stores and falsifying the military accounts. After the Peace of Paris, in 1763, the truth of the libel was at his own instance investigated, his accounts passed with honor, and his real defamer-an inferior officerdismissed from the army.

After ten years of active official life, somewhat prosaic withal, but combining service, civil and military, in council and camp, in the colonies and in Parliament, Pownall found himself with leisure to pursue the great plan of his life-that for England's closer political union with her colonies. The year following the Peace he devoted to preparing for the press that remarkable book entitled, The Administration of the Colonics, the first edition of which appeared in London in 1764. It passed through five editions, plainly denoting the estimation in which it was held by the English-speaking world in those trying ten years of discussion and recrimination which preceded the American Revolution. Its literary style has been criticised by a few verbal purists who overlooked the subject matter, alone worthy of attention in a technical work of this character.

In the editions of 1764 and 1765, now difficult to procure, the author

expressed an opinion, subsequently modified, on the abstract right of the Imperial Government to exact some external contribution from the colonies toward defraying the frightful expense of the seven years' war a proposition founded upon the cost of policing the high seas, and once conceded sound by Franklin. But in the edition of 1768, possessed by the New York Historical Society, Pownall corrected this opinion, and denied the right of Parliament to tax the colonies at all, so long as they remained unrepresented in Parliament. In the preface of this edition, addressed to Grenville, he points out the danger which threatens English supremacy in America, and makes no scruple to avow, that unless the evils are averted, resistance should follow. This advice from so temperate a politician in England, was received with much satisfaction by the colonies. The book treats of all the defects in the colonial constitutionsthose which were inherent, as well as those which followed from the application of vicious principles of interpretation.

In the course of his exposition, the author resorts to the historical method, and shows the theory by which the maritime powers of Europe acquired title to the territories of the new world, and like the modern jurisprudent, Sir Henry Maine, Pownall ascribes this theory to a principle of the Roman law. He next analyzes the civil governments of the colonies, and traces them to their ancient archetypes, the Duchy of Normandy, the Island of Jersey and the counties palatine of England, from which the law officers of the crown first derived their precedents for the charters and other documents in use in the North American colonies. From this chaos of antiquity he extracts and applies the fundamental principles of what, to his own honor, he concedes were colonial constitutions. If, in this connection, it is remembered that up to this time the English lawyers-such as Blackstone, whose work was just then published-had but cursorily and even superficially touched this subject, we shall appreciate the merits of Pownall's performance, and that he was the first Englishman who had taken the trouble to place colonial governments and constitutions upon rational and liberal foundations.

But his main stress was laid upon the necessity of a revision of the political principles uniting the colonies to England. In his proposed reform of the union, he did not forget that he was accidentally born a monarchist, but he belonged to that liberal and enlightened school of monarchists which embraces Mr. Gladstone in our own day. Mr. Pownall would have preserved to the colonists their separate legislatures and decentralized administration. A common kingship was to be the executive of his union, and a great federal Parliament, in which every State was to be

represented, would constitute the legislative element. This federal Parliament was to meet in the territorial center, and, if needs be, the seat of government of the union was to be ultimately removed to America.

Visionary as the plan seemed, and as Pownall admitted that it would seem to the aristocratic, ruling class in England, he contended that it was the only way by which a union between England and America could be preserved; and without this he repeatedly affirmed that dismemberment of the existing English empire was certain. Had his vigorous and radical plan been adopted, the avowed grievances of the colonies would have been redressed; for until the Declaration of Independence no colonial State paper quarreled with the monarchical feature of English rule. The adoption of Pownall's union would have postponed internecine war, and have caused America to occupy much sooner the hegemony of English-speaking peoples -a position still denied to us by England but destined surely to come, just as Greece ultimately became the embodiment of the tradition and policy of the Hellenic race to the exclusion of the more ancient seats of that people. This destiny of America is already indicated by the title of "Greater England" bestowed on us by English historians. That there may be no thoughtless deprecation of such a result, it should be borne in mind that the Federal Constitution is as purely the result of Anglican institutions as Magna Charta or the Bill of Rights. It is the very incarnation of English law, plus a political revolution. It is no condescension on the part of this great country to recognize the subtle influences of nearly two centuries of the rule of that sturdy island race which has been more potent in the forces of civilization than any race excepting the Greek, and not excepting the Roman. No doubt the political severance of America from Europe was an inestimable advantage to the governments of the whole world. Had Pownall's union been consummated the same separation would have followed peacefully, although not before the cause of American letters and culture had been speeded by several centuries. In thus emphasizing the effects of Pownall's union, we are led to see how his conception would have modified history, and that to this extent it was the conception. of a statesman.

Pownall devoted the year 1765 to a personal affair-one long in contemplation; some years before this he had jocosely said that the "lion in the Pownall coat of arms was a bachelor like his master," a compound joke directed against the absurdities of the Heralds' College as well as his own bachelorhood. In his forty-fifth year he married Lady Faulkner, the daughter of Lieutenant-General Churchill, and the widow of an English minister to the Porte at Constantinople. At her death, some years subse

quently, the governor composed the epitaph on her tomb at Lincoln. Strangely enough this composition enters into one of the most interesting incidents of English history. Pownall was one of the forty-two persons associated with the authorship of the celebrated Junius Letters-letters written under a pseudonym and enveloped in a mystery as complete as that of the unknown destroyer of the busts of Hermes at Athens. Both outrages baffled the detection of a vindictive public. The biographers of Sir Philip Francis, the real "Junius," disposed of Pownall's claims by the production of Lady Pownall's epitaph. For they said, that an author who was guilty of such an atrocious style could never be the keen, sartirical and polished Junius. The epitaph is as follows:

"Here is entombed Dame Harriet, daughter of Lieutenant-General Churchill, wife in her first marriage to Sir Everard Faulkner, Knight, in her second, to Governor Pownall. She died February 6, 1777, aged 51. Her person was that of animating beauty, with a complexion of the most exquisite brilliancy, unfaded when she fell. Her understanding was of such quickness and reach of thought that her knowledge-although she had learning-was instantaneous and original. Her heart, warmed with universal benevolence to the highest degree of sensibility, had a ready ear for pity and glowed with friendship, as a sacred and inviolate fire. Her love to those who were blest with it was happiness. Her sentiments were correct, refined, elevated. Her manners so cheerful, elegant, amiable and winning, that while she was admired, she was beloved, and while she was enlightened and enlivened, she was the delight of the world in which she lived. She was formed for life-she was prepared for death: which being a gentle wafting to immortality, she lives where life is real."

The biographers of Sir Philip Francis, who so wantonly reproduced this epitaph, made no further comment than that indicated. They evi dently thought that the claims of Pownall were insignificant if he could write about a lady's complexion when she fell, as if she were a horsedragoon, killed in battle, and indite mixed metaphor about a “heart that warmed with benevolence," and "had an car for pity." Others will believe Governor Pownall's authorship of the Junius Letters sufficiently refuted by the unfriendly spirit these letters display toward the friends of the colonies. Perhaps the only thing this incident does prove for Pownall is his wide acquaintance with the leading men of England, for the real Junius knew their most hidden foibles, and no one was associated with the authorship, unless he possessed at least this qualification. One other fact cited by the friends of Pownall's claims to being Junius is, that in the year 1762 the Jesuitical books were burned in Paris by the common hangman