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

DEAR SIR,
OU are pleased to call again, and with

fome earnestness, for my thoughts on the late proceedings in France. I will not give you reason to imagine, that I think my sentiments 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 hesitated at the time, when you first desired to receive them. In the first letter I had the honour to write to you, and which at length I fend, I wrote neither' for nor from any defcription 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 transmitted to you, that, though I do most heartily with that France may be animated by a spirit of

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radonal

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 solemn public seal 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 seckon myself among the most forward in my zeal for maintaining that constitution 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 thofe who are attached to the conftitution of this · kingdom, will take good care how they are involved with persons who, under the pretext of zeal towards the Revolution and Constitution, too frequently wander from their true principles; and are ready on every occasion to depart from the firm tut cautious and deliberate fpirit which produced the one, and which presides in the other. Before I proceed to answer the more material

particulars

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particulars in your letter, I shall beg leavé ro give you such 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 firft, calling itself the Constitutional Society, or Society for Constitutional Information, or by some such title; is, I believe, of seven or eight years standing. The institution of this society appears to be of a charitables and so far of a laudable; nature: it was intended for the circulation, at the expence of the itembers, of many books, which few others would be ac the expence of buying; and which might lie on the hands of the booksellets, to the great loss of an useful body of men. Whether the books fo 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 sent from hence. What improvements they have had in their paffage (as it is said fome liquors are meliorated by crossing the fea, 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 fociety; nor have their pro

ceedings

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ceedings been accounted, except by some of themselves, as of any serious consequence.

Your National Affembly 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 cxcuseable 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 sort of sub-committee in England for extending the principles of the National Assembly. Henceforward 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 splendour 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 enquiry, that on the anniversary of the Revolution in 1688, a club of diffenters, but of what denomination I know not, have long had the custom of hearing a sermon in one of their

churches,

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