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SIR,

HAD the honour to receive your letter of the 17th of November laft, in which, with fome exceptions, you are pleased to confider favourably the letter I have written on the affairs of France. I fhall ever accept any mark of approbation, attended with instruction, with more pleasure than general and unqualified praifes. The latter can ferve only to flatter our vanity; the former, whilst it encourages us to proceed, may help to improve us in our progrefs.

Some of the errors you point out to me in my printed letter are really fuch. One only I find to be material. It is corrected in the edition which I take the liberty of fending to you. As to the cavils which may be made on fome part of my remarks, with regard to the gradations in your new conftitution, you obferve juftly, that they do not affect the fubftance of my objections. Whether there be a round more or lefs in the ladder of representation, by which your workmen afcend from their parochial tyranny to their federal anarchy, when the whole scale is falfe, appears to me of little or no importance.

I published my thoughts on that conftitution, that my countrymen might be enabled to eftimate the wifdom of the plans which were held out to their imitation. I conceived that the true character of those plans would be beft collected fromthe committee appointed to prepare them. I thought that the scheme of their building would be better comprehended in the design of the architects than in the execution of the mafons. It was not worth my reader's while to occupy himfelf with the alterations by which bungling prac

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tice corrects abfurd theory. Such an inveftigation would be endless: becaufe every day's pait experience of impracticability has driven, and every day's future experience will drive, thofe men to new devices as exceptionable as the old, and which are no otherwife worthy of obfervation than as they give a daily proof of the delufion of their promises, and the falfehoods of their profeffions. Had I followed all thefe changes, my letter would have been only a gazette of their wanderings; a journal of their march from error to error, through a dry dreary defart, unguided by the lights of heaven, or by the contrivance which wifdom has invented to fupply their place.

I am unalterably perfuaded, that the attempt to opprefs, degrade, impoverish, confifcate, and extin guith the original gentlemen, and landed property of an whole nation, cannot be juftified under any form it may affume. I am fatisfied beyond a doubt, that the project of turning a great empire into a veftry, or into a collection of veftries, or of governing it in the fpirit of a parochial adminiftration, is fenfelefs and abfurd, in any mode, or with any qualifications, I can never be convinced, that the fcheme of placing the highest powers of the ftate in churchwardens and conftables, and other fuch officers, guided by the prudence of litigious attornies, and Jew brokers, and fet in action by fhameless women of the lowest con· dition, by keepers of hotcis, taverns, and brothels, by pert apprentices, by clerks, fhop-boys, hairdreffers, fidlers, and dancers on the ftage, (who, in fuch a commonwealth as your's, will in future overbear, as already they have overborne, the fober incapacity of dull uninftructed men, of useful but laborious occupations) can never be put into any fhape, that must not be both difgraceful and deftructive. The whole of this project, even if it were what it pretends to be, and was not in reality the do minion,

minion, through that difgraceful medium, of half a dozen, or perhaps fewer, intriguing politicians, is fo mean, fo low-minded, fo ftupid a contrivance, in point of wisdom, as well as fo perfectly deteftable for its wickedness, that I muit always confider the correctives which might make it in any degree practicable, to be fo many new objections to it.

In that wretched ftate of things, fome are afraid that the authors of your miferies may be led to precipitate their further defigns, by the hints they may receive from the very arguments used to expofe the abfurdity of their fyftem, to mark the incongruity of its parts, and its inconfiftency with their own principles; and that your matters may be led to render their fchemes more confiftent, by rendering them more mifchievous. Excufe the liberty which your indulgence authorizes me to take, when I obferve to you, that fuch apprehenfions as thefe would prevent all exertion of our faculties in this great caufe of mankind.

In

A rafh recourfe to force is not to be juftified in a state of real weakness. Such attempts bring on difgrace; and, in their failure, difcountenance and difcourage more rational endeavours. But reafon is to be hazarded, though it may be perverted by craft and fophiftry; for reafon can fuffer no lofs nor fhame, nor can it impede any ufeful plan of future policy. In the unavoidable uncertainty, as to the effect, which attends on every measure of human prudence, nothing feems a furer antidote to the poifon of fraud than its detection. It is true the fraud may be fwallowed after this difcovery; and perhaps even fwallowed the more greedily for being a detected fraud. Men fometimes make a point of honour not to be difabused; and they had rather fall into an hundred errors than confefs one. But after all,-when neither our principles nor our difpofitions, nor, perhaps, our talents, enable us to encounter delufion with delufion, we

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must use our best reason to those that ought to be reafonable creatures, and to take our chance for the event. We cannot act on these anomalies in the minds of men. I do not conceive that the perfons who have contrived these things can be made much the better or the worse for any thing which can be faid to them. They are reafon proof. Here and there, fome men, who were at firft carried away by wild good intentions, may be led, when their firft fervors are abated, to join in a fober furvey of the fchemes into which they had been deluded. To those only (and I am forry to say they are not likely to make a large defcription) we apply with any hope. I may fpeak it upon an affurance almoft approaching to abfolute knowledge, that nothing has been done that has not been contrived from the beginning, even before the ftates had affembled. Nulla nova mihi res inopinave furgit. They are the fame men and the fame defigns that they were from the firft, though varied in their appearance. It was the very fame animal that at firft crawled about in the fhape of a caterpillar, that you now fee rife into the air, and expand his wings to the fun.

Proceeding, therefore, as we are obliged to proceed, that is upon an hypothefis that we addrefs rational men, can falfe political principles be more effectually expofed, than by demonftrating that they lead to confequences directly inconfiftent with and fubverfive of the arrangements grounded upon them? If this kind. of demonftration is not permitted, the procefs of reafoning called deductio ad abfurdum, which even the feverity of geometry does not reject, could not be employed at all in legiflative difcuffions. One of our ftrongest weapons against folly acting with authority, would be loft.

You know, Sir, that even the virtuous efforts of you patriots to prevent the ruin of your country have had this very turn given to them.

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