ember his having been one of the
committee for forming one of their annual Constitutions, I mean the
admirable Constitution of 1793, after having been a chamber council to
the no less admirable Constitution of 1791. This pious patriot has his
eyes still directed to his dear native country, notwithstanding her in
gratitude to so kind a benefactor. This outlaw of England, and lawgiver
to France, is now, in secret probably, trying his hand again, and
inviting us to him by making his Constitution such as may give his
disciples in England some plausible pretext for going into the house
that he has opened. We have discovered, it seems, that all which the
boasted wisdom of our ancestors has labored to bring to perfection for
six or seven centuries is nearly, or altogether, matched in six or seven
days, at the leisure hours and sober intervals of Citizen Thomas Paine.

"But though the treacherous tapster, Thomas,
Hangs a new Angel two doors from us,
As fine as dauber's hands can make it,
In hopes that strangers may mistake it,
We think it both a shame and sin
To quit the good old Angel Inn,"

Indeed, in this good old house, where everything at least is well aired,
I shall be content to put up my fatigued horses, and here take a bed for
the long night that begins to darken upon me. Had I, however, the honor
(I must now call it so) of being a member of any of the constitutional
clubs, I should think I had carried my point most completely. It is
clear, by the applauses bestowed on what the author calls this new
Constitution, a mixed oligarchy, that the difference between the
clubbists and the old adherents to the monarchy of this country is
hardly worth a scuffle. Let it depart in peace, and light lie the earth
on the British Constitution! By this easy manner of treating the most
difficult of all subjects, the constitution for a great kingdom, and by
letting loose an opinion that they may be made by any adventurers in
speculation in a small given time, and for any country, all the ties,
which, whether of reason or prejudice, attach mankind to their old,
habitual, domestic governments, are not a little loosened; all
communion, which the similarity of the basis has produced between all
the governments that compose what we call the Christian world and the
republic of Europe, would be dissolved. By these hazarded speculations
France is more approximated to us in constitution than in situation; and
in proport