Chapter II: Preface: One hundred years ago to-day, Junius wrote as follows

"The man who fairly and completely answers this argument, shall
have my thanks and my applause.... Grateful as I am to the good
Being whose bounty has imparted to me this reasoning intellect,
whatever it is, I hold myself proportionably indebted to him from
whose enlightened understanding another ray of knowledge
communicates to mine. But neither should I think the most exalted
faculties of the human mind a gift worthy of the Divinity, nor any
assistance in the improvement of them a subject of gratitude to my
fellow-creatures, if I were not satisfied that really to inform
the understanding corrects and enlarges the heart."

These were the concluding words of his last Letter. So say I now, and I make them the preface to an argument which now sets the great apostle of liberty right before the world. They serve, like a literary hyphen, to connect the two ages--his own with this; and the two lives--the masked with the open one; in both of which ages and lives he did good to mankind, and that mightily.

WASHINGTON, D.C., _January 21, 1872_.