is 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 abounds with principles of
government that are uncontrovertible--with arguments which every reader
will feel, are unanswerable--with plans for the increase of commerce
and manufactures--for the extinction of war--for the education of
the children of the poor--for the comfortable support of the aged and
decayed persons of both sexes--for the relief of the army and navy, and,
in short, for the promotion of every thing that can benefit the moral,
civil, and political condition of Man.

Why, then, some calm observer will ask, why is the work prosecuted, if
these be the goodly matters it contains? I will tell thee, friend;
it contains also a plan for the reduction of Taxes, for lessening the
immense expences of Government, for abolishing sinecure Places and
Pensions; and it proposes applying the redundant taxes, that shall
be saved by these reforms, to the purposes mentioned in th