The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V | Page 7

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 St. George's parish, and there signed an
association of the nature and tendency of those he had the night before
so vehemently condemned; and several of his particular and most
intimate friends, inhabitants of that parish, attended and signed along
with him.
14. Immediately after this extraordinary step, and in order perfectly to
defeat the ends of that association against Jacobin publications, (which,
contrary to his opinions, he had promoted and signed,) a mischievous
society was formed under his auspices, called The Friends of the
Liberty of the Press. Their title groundlessly insinuated that the
freedom of the press had lately suffered, or was now threatened with,
some violation. This society was only, in reality, another modification
of the society calling itself The Friends of the People, which in the
preceding summer had caused so much uneasiness in the Duke of
Portland's mind, and in the minds of several of his friends. This new
society was composed of many, if not most, of the members of the club
of the Friends of the People, with the addition of a vast multitude of
others (such as Mr. Horne Tooke) of the worst and most seditious
dispositions that could be found in the whole kingdom. In the first
meeting of this club Mr. Erskine took the lead, and directly (without
any disavowal ever since on Mr. Fox's part) made use of his name and
authority in favor of its formation and purposes. In the same meeting
Mr. Erskine had thanks for his defence of Paine, which amounted to a
complete avowal of that Jacobin incendiary; else it is impossible to
know how Mr. Erskine should have deserved such marked applauses
for acting merely as a lawyer for his fee, in the ordinary course of his
profession.
15. Indeed, Mr. Fox appeared the general patron of all such persons and
proceedings. When Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and other persons, for
practices of the most dangerous kind, in Paris and in London, were

removed from the King's Guards, Mr. Fox took occasion in the House
of Commons heavily to censure that act, as unjust and oppressive, and
tending to make officers bad citizens. There were few, however, who
did not call for some such measures on the part of government, as of
absolute necessity for the king's personal safety, as well as that of the
public; and nothing but the mistaken lenity, with which such practices
were rather discountenanced than punished, could possibly deserve
reprehension in what was done with regard to those gentlemen.
16. Mr. Fox regularly and systematically, and with a diligence long
unusual to him, did everything he could to countenance the same
principle of fraternity and connection with the Jacobins abroad, and the
National Convention of France, for which these officers had been
removed from the Guards. For when a bill (feeble and lax, indeed, and
far short of the vigor required by the conjuncture) was brought in for
removing out of the kingdom the emissaries of France, Mr. Fox
opposed it with all his might. He pursued a vehement and detailed
opposition to it through all its stages, describing it as a measure
contrary to the existing treaties between Great Britain and France, as a
violation of the law of nations, and as an outrage on the Great Charter
itself.
17. In the same manner, and with the same heat, he opposed a bill
which (though awkward and inartificial in its construction) was right
and wise in its principle, and was precedented in the best times, and
absolutely necessary at that juncture: I mean the Traitorous
Correspondence Bill. By these means the enemy, rendered infinitely