The "_few months_" in the above sentence is just a year and a half after the king "remarked in confidence," etc. But Francis did not go to India for more than two and a half years after. In March, 1772, he resigned his clerkship in the war department, in consequence of a quarrel with Lord Barrington, the new Minister at War. He then left England, and traveled on the continent the remainder of the year; in the June following he was appointed one of the Council of Bengal, with a salary of L10,000, and in the summer of 1774 went to India. That fall Thomas Paine came to America. It is thus the phrase "_a few months_," artfully put into a sentence in connection with the _supposed_ fact that the king had found out Junius, and had bribed him to stop writing, would mislead the mind, and pervert a reasonable conclusion. This is a trick of the pen, and to which no honorable mind will descend. The fact is, Francis would never have been thought of as Junius, had he not been an intimate friend and schoolmate of Mr. Woodfall's. {195}But the above argument, summed up by Lord Macaulay, is the strongest on record for any man till now. I was not aware of its weakness till now. I supposed there was a plausible argument at least. To be answered, it needs only to be appended to this. I speak without vanity, for the argument is nature's own, not mine. I will honor it, therefore, with a rebuttal from Junius himself. In Letter 44 he says: "I may quit the service, but it would be absurd to suspect me of desertion. The reputation of these papers is an honorable pledge for my attachment to the people. To sacrifice a respected character, and to renounce the esteem of society, requires more than Mr. Wedderburn's resolution; and though in him it was rather a profession than a desertion of his principles (I speak tenderly of this gentleman, for, when treachery is in question, I think we should make allowances for a Scotchman), yet we have seen him in the House of Commons, overwhelmed with confusion, and almost bereft of his faculties. But in truth, sir, I have left no room for an accommodation with the piety of St. James'. My offenses are not to be redeemed by recantation or repentance: on one side, our warmest patriots would disclaim me as a burthen to their honest ambition; on the other, the vilest prostitution, if Junius could descend to it, would lose its natural merit and influence in the cabinet, and treachery be no longer a recommendation to the royal favor."