were ever as charitably read is more than I know. Possibly several
of them have been exported to France and, like goods not in request
here, may with you have found a market. I have heard much talk of
the lights to be drawn from books that are sent from hence. What
improvements they have had in their passage (as it is said some
liquors are meliorated by crossing the sea) I cannot tell; but I never
heard a man of common judgment or the least degree of information
speak a word in praise of the greater part of the publications
circulated by that society, nor have their proceedings been accounted,
except by some of themselves, as of any serious consequence.

    Your National Assembly seems to entertain much the same opinion
that I do of this poor charitable club. As a nation, you reserved
the whole stock of your eloquent acknowledgments for the Revolution
Society, when their fellows in the Constitutional were, in equity,
entitled to some share. Since you have selected the Revolution Society
as the great object of your national thanks and praises, you will
think me excusable in making its late conduct the subject of my
observations. The National Assembly of France has given importance
to these gentlemen by adopting them; and they return the favor by
acting as a committee in England for extending the principles of the
National Assembly. Henceforward we must consider them as a kind of
privileged persons, as no inconsiderable members in the diplomatic
body. This is one among the revolutions which have given splendor to
obscurity, and distinction to undiscerned merit. Until very lately I
do not recollect to have heard of this club. I am quite sure that it
never occupied a moment of my thoughts, nor, I believe, those of any
person out of their own set. I find, upon inquiry, that on the
anniversary of the Revolution in 1688, a club of dissenters, but of
what denomination I know not, have long had the custom of hearing a
sermon in one of their churches; and that afterwards they spent the
day cheerfully, as other clubs do, at the tavern. But I never heard
that any public measure or political system, much less that the merits
of the constitution of any foreign nation, had been the subject of a
formal proceeding at their festivals, until, to my inexpressible
surprise, I found them in a sort of public capacity, by a
congratulatory address, giving an authoritative sanction to the
proceedings of the National Assembly in France.

    In the ancient principles and conduct of the club, so far at least
as they were declared, I see nothing to which I could take
exception. I think it very probable that for some purpose new
members may have entered among them, and that some truly Christian
politicians, who love to dispense benefits but are careful to
conceal the hand which distributes the dole, may have made them the
instruments of their pious designs. Whatever I may have reason to
suspect concerning private management, I shall speak of nothing as
of a certainty but what is public.

    For one, I should be sorry to be thought, directly or
indirectly, concerned in their proceedings. I certainly take my full
share, along with the rest of the world, in my individual and
private capacity, in speculating on what has been done or is doing
on the public stage in any place ancient or modern; in the republic of
Rome or the republic of Paris; but having no general apostolical
mission, being a citizen of a particular state and being bound up,
in a considerable degree, by its public will, I should think it at
least improper and irregular for me to open a formal public
correspondence with the actual government of a foreign nation, without
the express authority of the government under which I live.

    I should be still more unwilling to enter into that correspondence
under anything like an equivocal description, which to many,
unacquainted with our usages, might make the address, in which I
joined, appear as the act of persons in some sort of corporate
capacity acknowledged by the laws of this kingdom and authorized to
speak the sense of some part of it. On account of the ambiguity and
uncertainty of unauthorized general descriptions, and of the deceit
which may be practiced under them, and not from mere formality, the
House of Commons would reject the most sneaking petition for the
most trifling object, under that mode of signature to which you have
thrown open the folding doors of your presence chamber, and have
ushered into your National Assembly with as much ceremony and
parade, and with as great a bustle of applause, as if you have been
visited by the whole representative majesty of the whole English
nation. If what this society has thought proper to send forth had been
a piece of argument, it would have signified little whose argument
it was. It would be neither the more nor the less convincing on
account of the party it came from. But this is only a vote and
resolution. It stands solely on authority; and in this case it is
the mere authority of individuals, few of whom appear. Their
signatures ought, in my opinion, to have been annexed to their
instrument. The world would then have the means of knowing how many
they are; who they are; and of what value their opinions may be,
from their personal abilities, from their knowledge, their experience,
or their lead and authority in this state. To me, who am but a plain
man, the proceeding looks a little too refined and too ingenious; it
has too much the air of a political strategem adopted for the sake
of giving, under a high-sounding name, an importance to the public
declarations of this club which, when the matter came to be closely
inspected, they did not altogether so well deserve. It is a policy
that has very much the complexion of a fraud.

    I flatter myself that I love a manly, moral, regulated liberty
as well as any gentleman of that society, be he who he will; and
perhaps I have given as good proofs of my attachment to that cause
in the whole course of my public conduct. I think I envy liberty as
little as they do to any other nation. But I cannot stand forward
and give praise or blame to anything which relates to human actions,
and human concerns, on a simple view of the object, as it stands