I should be still more unwilling to enter into that correspondence under
anything like an equivocal description, which to many, unacquainted with
our usages, might make the address in which I joined appear as the act
of persons in some sort of corporate capacity, acknowledged by the laws
of this kingdom, and authorized to speak the sense of some part of it.
On account of the ambiguity and uncertainty of unauthorized general
descriptions, and of the deceit which may be practised under them, and
not from mere formality, the House of Commons would reject the most
sneaking petition for the most trifling object, under that mode of
signature to which you have thrown open the folding-doors of your
presence-chamber, and have ushered into your National Assembly with as
much ceremony and parade, and with as great a bustle of applause, as if
you had been visited by the whole representative majesty of the whole
English nation. If what this society has thought proper to send forth
had been a piece of argument, it would have signified little whose
argument it was. It would be neither the more nor the less convincing on
account of the party it came from. But this is only a vote and
resolution. It stands solely on authority; and in this case it is the
mere authority of individuals, few of whom appear. Their signatures
ought, in my opinion, to have been annexed to their instrument. The
world would then have the means of knowing how many they are, who they
are, and of what value their opinions may be, from their personal
abilities, from their knowledge, their experience, or their lead and
authority in this state. To me, who am but a plain man, the proceeding
looks a little too refined and too ingenious; it has too much the air of
a political stratagem, adopted for the sake of giving, under a
high-sounding name, an importance to the public declarations of this
club, which, when the matter came to be closely inspected, they did not
altogether so well deserve. It is a policy that has very much the
complexion of a fraud.

I flatter myself that I love a manly, moral, regulated liberty as well
as any gentleman of that society, be he who he will; and perhaps I have
given as good proofs of my attachment to that cause, in the whole course
of my public conduct. I think I envy liberty as little as they do to any
other nation. But I cannot stand forward, and give praise or blame to
anything which relates to human actions and human concerns on a simpl