hes
that they misinterpret the means you use. They suppose that those mild
means arise from a restriction that you cannot use others, or from a
consciousness of some defect on my part of which you are unwilling to
provoke the enquiry.

But as you ask me if it be my wish that you should embark in this
controversy and risque the consequences with respect to myself, I will
answer this part of the question by marking out precisely the part I
wish you to take. What I mean is a sort of middle line above what you
have yet gone, and not up to the full extremity of the case, which will
still lie in reserve. It is to write a letter to the Committee that
shall in the first place defeat by anticipation all the objections they
might make to a simple reclamation, and at the same time make the ground
good for that object. But, instead of sending the letter immediately, to
invite some 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 thei