of the Committee to your house and to make that invitation
the opportunity of shewing them the letter, expressing at the same time
a wish that you had done this, from a hope that the business might be
settled in an amicable manner without your being forced into an official
interference, that would excite the observations of the Enemies of both
Countries, and probably interrupt the harmony that subsisted between the
two republics. But as I can not convey the ideas I wish you to use by
any means so concisely or so well as to suppose myself the writer of the
letter I shall adopt this method and you will make use of such parts or
such ideas of it as you please if you approve the plan. Here follows the
supposed letter:

Citizens: When I first arrived amongst you as Minister from the United
States of America I was given to understand that the liberation of
Thomas Paine would take place without any official interference on my
part. This was the more agreeable to me as it would not only supercede
the necessity of that interference, but would leave to yourselves the
whole opportunity of doing justice to a man who as far as I have been
able to learn has suffered much cruel treatment under what you have
denominated the system of Terror. But as I find my expectations have not
been fulfilled I am under the official necessity of being more explicit
upon the subject than I have hitherto been.

Permit me, in the first place, to observe that as it is impossible for
me to suppose that it could have been the intention of France to seduce
any citizens of America from their allegiance to their proper country
by offering them the title of French citizen, so must I be compelled to
believe, that the title of French citizen conferred on Thomas Paine was
intended only as a mark of honorary respect towards a man who had
so eminently distinguished himself in defence of liberty, and on no
occasion more so than in promoting and defending your own revolution.
For a proof of this I refer you to his two works entitled _Rights of
Man_. Those works have procured to him an addition of esteem in America,
and I am sorry they have been so ill rewarded in France. But be this
title of French Citizen more or less, it is now entirely swept away by
the vote of the Convention which declares him to be a foreigner, and
which supercedes the vote of the Assembly that conferred that title upon
him, consequently upon the case superceded with it.

In consequence of th