conduct. I have stated the above matters, not as inferring a criminal
charge of evil intention. If I had meant to do so, perhaps they are
stated with tolerable exactness. But I have no such view. The intentions
of these gentlemen may be very pure. I do not dispute it. But I think
they are in some great error. If these things are done by Mr. Fox and
his friends with good intentions, they are not done less dangerously;
for it shows these good intentions are not under the direction of safe
maxims and principles.

48. Mr. Fox, Mr. Sheridan, and the gentlemen who call themselves the
Phalanx, have not been so very indulgent to others. They have thought
proper to ascribe to those members of the House of Commons, who, in
exact agreement with the Duke of Portland and Lord Fitzwilliam, abhor
and oppose the French system, the basest and most unworthy motives for
their conduct;--as if none could oppose that atheistic, immoral, and
impolitic project set up in France, so disgraceful and destructive, as I
conceive, to human nature itself, but with some sinister intentions.
They treat those members on all occasions with a sort of lordly
insolence, though they are persons that (whatever homage they may pay to
the eloquence of the gentlemen who choose to look down upon them with
scorn) are not their inferiors in any particular which calls for and
obtains just consideration from the public: not their inferiors in
knowledge of public law, or of the Constitution of the kingdom; not
their inferiors in their acquaintance with its foreign and domestic
interests; not their inferiors in experience or practice of business;
not their inferiors in moral character; not their inferiors in the
proofs they have given of zeal and industry in the service of their
country. Without denying to these gentlemen the respect and
consideration which it is allowed justly belongs to them, we see no
reason why they should not as well be obliged to defer something to our