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Updated: May 4, 2025
To the honour of the county of Somerset be it told, that there was one gentleman in it who, by joining our little party upon the hustings, had the honesty and the courage openly to brave the fury of the tyrannical junto of Magistrates and Parsons, who had assembled upon this occasion; but to its shame be it said, he was the only man who did so.
Thus aided and encouraged and elated with fresh hopes, Columbus took leave of the little junto at La Rabida, and set out, in the spring of 1486, for the Castilian court, which had just assembled at Cordova, where the sovereigns were fully occupied with their chivalrous enterprise for the conquest of Granada.
And, from this time began an intrigue between his majesty and a junto of ministers maliciously bent against me, which broke out in less than two months, and had like to have ended in my utter destruction. Of so little weight are the greatest services to princes, when put into the balance with a refusal to gratify their passions.
"Have you lately observed any defect in the laws of your country, of which it would be proper to move the Legislature for an amendment? or do you know of any beneficial law that is wanting?" "Is there any man whose friendship you want, and which the Junto, or any of them, can procure for you?" This is a sample of the questions asked at their meetings, and answered.
Having shown that I did not “alter my opinion after I left Philadelphia,” and that I acted no “contradictory parts on the great political stage,” and therefore that there are none such to reconcile, the reason assigned by the Landholder for that purpose doth not deserve my notice, except only to observe that he shrewdly intimates there is already a Junto established, who are to share in and deal out the offices of this new government at their will and pleasure, and that they have already fixed upon the character who is to be “Deputy Attorney General of the United States for the State of Maryland.” If this is true, it is worth while to inquire of whom this Junto consists, as it might lead to a discovery of the persons for the gratification of whose ambition and interest this system is prepared, and is, if possible, to be enforced, and from the disposition of offices already allotted in the various and numerous departments, we possibly might discover whence proceeds the conviction and zeal of some of its advocates.
By the help of our club, the Junto, I procured fifty subscribers of forty shillings each to begin with, and ten shillings a year for fifty years. We afterwards obtained a charter, and this was the mother of all the North American subscription libraries now so numerous, which have made the common tradesmen and farmers as intelligent as most gentlemen from other countries.
We cannot therefore wonder that his influence over his party should have been considerable. But the greatest man among the members of the junto, and, in some respects, the greatest man of that age, was the Lord Keeper Somers. He was equally eminent as a jurist and as a politician, as an orator and as a writer.
In old age Doctor Franklin said of the Junto: "It was the best school of philosophy, morality, and politics that then existed in the Province; for our queries, which were read the week preceding their discussion, put us upon reading with attention on the several subjects, that we might speak more to the purpose; and here, too, we acquired better habits of conversation, every thing being studied in our rules which might prevent our disgusting each other."
In the autumn of the preceding year, I had formed most of my ingenious acquaintance into a club of mutual improvement, which we called the Junto; it met on Friday evenings for essays and debates. Every one of its members exerted himself in recommending business to our new firm.
The Whigs of the junto, better acquainted with the temper of the country and of the new House of Commons, pronounced it impossible to carry a vote for a land force of more than ten thousand men.
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