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, but
cautious and deliberate, spirit which produced the one and which
presides in the other. Before I proceed to answer the more material
particulars in your letter, I shall beg leave to 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 first, 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 charitable, and so far of a laudable nature: it was intended
for the circulation, at the expense of the members, of many books which
few others would be at the expense of buying, and which might lie on the
hands of the booksellers, to the great loss of an useful body of men.
Whether the books so 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 passage
(as it is said some liquors are meliorated by crossing the sea) 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 society; nor have their proceedings been
accounted, except by some of themselves, as of any serious consequence.

Your National Assembly 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 excusable
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 favor by acting as