ory of extraordinary things, that a pamphlet should be produced by
an individual, unconnected with any sect or party, and not seeking to
make any, and almost a stranger in the land, that should compleatly
frighten a whole Government, and that in the midst of its most
triumphant security. Such a circumstance cannot fail to prove, that
either the pamphlet has irresistible powers, or the Government very
extraordinary defects, or both. The nation exhibits no signs of fear at
the Rights of Man; why then should the Government, unless the interest
of the two are really opposite to each other, and the secret is
beginning to be known? That there are two distinct classes of men in
the nation, those who pay taxes, and those who receive and live upon
the taxes, is evident at first sight; and when taxation is carried to
excess, it cannot fail to disunite those two, and something of this kind
is now beginning to appear.

It is also curious to observe, amidst all the fume and bustle about
Proclamations and Addresses, kept up by a few noisy and interested men,
how little the mass of the nation seem to care about either. They
appear to me, by the indifference they shew, not to believe a word the
Proclamation contains; and as to the Addresses, they travel to London
with the silence of a funeral, and having announced their arrival in
the Gazette, are deposited with the ashes of their predecessors, and Mr.
Dundas writes their _hic facet_.

One of the best effects which the Proclamation, and its echo the
Addresses have had, has been that of exciting and spreading curiosity;
and it requires only a single reflection to discover, that the object
of all curiosity is knowledge. When the mass of the nation saw that
Placemen, Pensioners, and Borough-mongers, were the persons that stood
forward to promote Addresses, it could not fail to create suspicions
that the public good was not their object; that the character of the
books, or writings, to which such persons obscurely alluded, not daring
to mention them, was directly contrary to what they described them to
be, and that it was necessary that every man, for his own satisfaction,
should exercise his proper right, and read and judge for himself.

But how will the persons who have been induced to read the _Rights of
Man_, by the clamour that has been raised against it, be surprized
to find, that, instead of a wicked, inflammatory work, instead of a
licencious and profligate performance, it abound