n which they
sympathized with the greater part of the nation, to the panic produced
by the pretended Popish plot in the reign of Charles the
Second,--describing it to be, as that was, a contrivance of knaves, and
believed only by well-meaning dupes and madmen.

12. The Monday following (the 17th of December) he pursued the same
conduct. The means used in England to cooeperate with the Jacobin army in
politics agreed with their modes of proceeding: I allude to the
mischievous writings circulated with much industry and success, as well
as the seditious clubs, which at that time added not a little to the
alarm taken by observing and well-informed men. The writings and the
clubs were two evils which marched together. Mr. Fox discovered the
greatest possible disposition to favor and countenance the one as well
as the other of these two grand instruments of the French system. He
would hardly consider any political writing whatsoever as a libel, or as
a fit object of prosecution. At a time in which the press has been the
grand instrument of the subversion of order, of morals, of religion,
and, I may say, of human society itself, to carry the doctrines of its
liberty higher than ever it has been known by its most extravagant
assertors, even in France, gave occasion to very serious reflections.
Mr. Fox treated the associations for prosecuting these libels as tending
to prevent the improvement of the human mind, and as a mobbish tyranny.
He thought proper to compare them with the riotous assemblies of Lord
George Gordon in 1780, declaring that he had advised his friends in
Westminster to sign the associations, whether they agreed to them or
not, in order that they might avoid destruction to their persons or
their houses, or a desertion of their shops. This insidious advice
tended to confound those who wished well to the object of the
association with the seditious against whom the association was
directed. By this stratagem, the confederacy intended for preserving the
British Constitution and the public peace would be wholly defeated. The
magistrates, utterly incapable of distinguishing the friends from the
enemies of order, would in vain look for support, when they stood in the
greatest need of it.

13. Mr. Fox's whole conduct, on this occasion, was without example. The
very morning after these violent declamations in the House of Commons
against the association, (that is, on Tuesday, the 18th,) he went
himself to a meeting of