dresses has been weekly retailed in the
Gazette; but the number of Addressers has been concealed. Several of the
Addresses have been voted by not more than ten or twelve persons; and a
considerable number of them by not more than thirty. The whole number of
Addresses presented at the time of writing this letter is three hundred
and twenty, (rotten Boroughs and Corporations included) and even
admitting, on an average, one hundred Addressers to each address, the
whole number of addressers would be but thirty-two thousand, and nearly
three months have been taken up in procuring this number. That the
success of the Proclamation has been less than the success of the work
it was intended to discourage, is a matter within my own knowledge; for
a greater number of the cheap edition of the First and Second Parts of
the Rights OF Man has been sold in the space only of one month, than the
whole number of Addressers (admitting them to be thirty-two thousand)
have amounted to in three months.

It is a dangerous attempt in any government to say to a Nation, "_thou
shalt not read_." This is now done in Spain, and was formerly done under
the old Government of France; but it served to procure the downfall of
the latter, and is subverting that of the former; and it will have
the same tendency in all countries; because _thought_ by some means
or other, is got abroad in the world, and cannot be restrained, though
reading may.

If _Rights of Man_ were a book that deserved the vile description which
the promoters of the Address have given of it, why did not these men
prove their charge, and satisfy the people, by producing it, and reading
it publicly? This most certainly ought to have been done, and would also
have been done, had they believed it would have answered their purpose.
But the fact is, that the book contains truths which those time-servers
dreaded to hear, and dreaded that the people should know; and it is now
following up the,

ADDRESS TO ADDRESSERS.

Addresses in every part of the nation, and convicting them of
falsehoods.

Among the unwarrantable proceedings to which the Proclamation has given
rise, the meetings of the Justices in several of the towns and counties
ought to be noticed.. Those men have assumed to re-act the farce of
General Warrants, and to suppress, by their own authority, whatever
publications they please. This is an attempt at power equalled only by
the conduct of the minor despots of the most despoti