it for a private letter, he found it difficult to change the form of address, when his fentiments had grown into a greater extent, and had received another direction. A different plan, he is sensible, might be more favourable to a commodious division and diftribution of his matter.

DEAR

DEAR SIR,

Y

OU

are pleased to call again, and with Tome earnestness, for my thoughts on the late proceedings in France. I will not give you reason to imagine, that I think my fentiments of such value as to wish myself to be folicited about them. They are of too little consequence to be very anxiously either communicated or withheld. It was from attention to you, and to you only, that I hefitated at the time, when you first defired to receive them. In the first letter I had the honour to write to you, and which at length I send, I wrote neither for nor from any description of men; nor shall I in this. My errors, if any, are my own. My reputation alone is to answer for them.

You see, Sir, by the long letter I have tranfmitted to you, that, though I do most heartily wish that France may be animated by a spirit of rational

B

rational liberty, and that I think you bound, in all honest policy, to provide a permanent body, in which that spirit may reside, and an effectual organ, by which it may act, it is my misfortune to entertain great doubts concerning several material points in your late transactions.

You imagined, when you wrote last, that I might possibly be reckoned among the approvers of certain proceedings in France, from the folemn public feal of sanction they have received from two clubs of gentlemen in London, called the Constitutional Society, and the Revolution Society.

I certainly have the honour to belong to more clubs than one, in which the constitution of this kingdom and the principles of the glorious Revolution, are held in high reverence: and I reckon myself, among the most forward in my zeal for maintaining that conftitution and those principles in their utmost purity and vigour. It is because I do so, that I think it necessary for me, that there should be no mistake. Those who cultivate the memory of our revolution, and those who are attached to the constitution of this kingdom, will take good care how they are involved with persons who, under the pretext of zea! towards the Revolution and Constitution, too frequently wander from their true principles; and are ready on every occasion to depart from the firm but cautious and deliberate spirit which produced the one, and which presides in the other. Before I proceed to answer the more material particulars

particulars in your letter, I shall beg leave to give you fuch information as I have been able to obtain of the two clubs which have thought proper, as bodies, to interfere in the concerns of France; first assuring you, that I am not, and that I have never been, a member of either of those societies.

The first, calling itself the Constitutional So. ciety, or Society for Conftitutional Information, or by fome fuch title, is, I believe, of seven or eight years standing. The institution of this fociety appears to be of a charitable, and so far of a laudable, nature: it was intended for the circulation, at the expence of the members, of many books, which few others would be at the expence of buying; and which might lie on the hands of the booksellers, to the great loss of an useful body of men. Whether the books so charitably circulated, 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 fent from hence. What improvements they have had in their passage (as it is faid some liquors are meliorated by croffing the fea) I cannot tell: But I never heard a man of common judgment, or the leaft degree of information, speak a word in praise of the greater part of the publications circulated by that fociety, nor have their proceedings

ceedings been accounted, except by fome of themselves, as of any ferious consequence.

Your National Assembly feems to entertain much the fame opinion that I do of this poor charitable club. As a nation, you referved the whole stock of your eloquent acknowledgments for the Revolution Society; when their fellows in the Conftitutional were, in equity, entitled to

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fome share. Since you have selected the Revo

lution Society as the great object of your national thanks and praises, you will think me excufeable 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 favour, by acting as a fort of fub-committee in England for extending the principles of the National Affembly. Henceforward we must confider them as a kind of privileged perfons; as no inconfiderable members in the diplomatic body. This is one among the revolutions which have given splendour to obfcurity, and distinction to undifcerned merit. Until very lately I do not recollect to have heard of this club. I am quite fure that it never occupied a moment of my thoughts; nor, I believe, those of any perfon out of their own set. I find, upon enquiry, 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 fermon in one of their churches;