Since you have selected the Revolution Society
as the great object of your national thanks and praises, you will
think me excusable in making its late conduct the subject of my
observations. The National Assembly of France has given importance
to these gentlemen by adopting them; and they return the favor by
acting as a committee in England for extending the principles of the
National Assembly. Henceforward we must consider them as a kind of
privileged persons, as no inconsiderable members in the diplomatic
body. This is one among the revolutions which have given splendor to
obscurity, and distinction to undiscerned merit. Until very lately I
do not recollect to have heard of this club. I am quite sure that it
never occupied a moment of my thoughts, nor, I believe, those of any
person out of their own set. I find, upon inquiry, that on the
anniversary of the Revolution in 1688, a club of dissenters, but of
what denomination I know not, have long had the custom of hearing a
sermon in one of their churches; and that afterwards they spent the
day cheerfully, as other clubs do, at the tavern. But I never heard
that any public measure or political system, much less that the merits
of the constitution of any foreign nation, had been the subject of a
formal proceeding at their festivals, until, to my inexpressible
surprise, I found them in a sort of public capacity, by a
congratulatory address, giving an authoritative sanction to the
proceedings of the National Assembly in France.
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