The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V | Page 4

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an influence directly against the government of his country, in a foreign
court, has made a highway into England for the intrigues of foreign
courts in our affairs. This is a sore evil,--an evil from which, before this
time, England was more free than any other nation. Nothing can
preserve us from that evil--which connects cabinet factions abroad with
popular factions here--but the keeping sacred the crown as the only
channel of communication with every other nation.
This proceeding of Mr. Fox has given a strong countenance and an
encouraging example to the doctrines and practices of the Revolution
and Constitutional Societies, and of other mischievous societies of that
description, who, without any legal authority, and even without any
corporate capacity, are in the habit of proposing, and, to the best of
their power, of forming, leagues and alliances with France.
This proceeding, which ought to be reprobated on all the general
principles of government, is in a more narrow view of things not less
reprehensible. It tends to the prejudice of the whole of the Duke of
Portland's late party, by discrediting the principles upon which they
supported Mr. Fox in the Russian business, as if they of that party also
had proceeded in their Parliamentary opposition on the same
mischievous principles which actuated Mr. Fox in sending Mr. Adair
on his embassy.
2. Very soon after his sending this embassy to Russia, that is, in the
spring of 1792, a covenanting club or association was formed in
London, calling itself by the ambitious and invidious title of "The
Friends of the People." It was composed of many of Mr. Fox's own
most intimate personal and party friends, joined to a very considerable
part of the members of those mischievous associations called the
Revolution Society and the Constitutional Society. Mr. Fox must have
been well apprised of the progress of that society in every one of its
steps, if not of the very origin of it. I certainly was informed of both,
who had no connection with the design, directly or indirectly. His
influence over the persons who composed the leading part in that
association was, and is, unbounded. I hear that he expressed some

disapprobation of this club in one case, (that of Mr. St. John,) where his
consent was formally asked; yet he never attempted seriously to put a
stop to the association, or to disavow it, or to control, check, or modify
it in any way whatsoever. If he had pleased, without difficulty, he
might have suppressed it in its beginning. However, he did not only not
suppress it in its beginning, but encouraged it in every part of its
progress, at that particular time when Jacobin clubs (under the very
same or similar titles) were making such dreadful havoc in a country
not thirty miles from the coast of England, and when every motive of
moral prudence called for the discouragement of societies formed for
the increase of popular pretensions to power and direction.
3. When the proceedings of this society of the Friends of the People, as
well as others acting in the same spirit, had caused a very serious alarm
in the mind of the Duke of Portland, and of many good patriots, he
publicly, in the House of Commons, treated their apprehensions and
conduct with the greatest asperity and ridicule. He condemned and
vilified, in the most insulting and outrageous terms, the proclamation
issued by government on that occasion,--though he well knew that it
had passed through the Duke of Portland's hands, that it had received
his fullest approbation, and that it was the result of an actual interview
between that noble Duke and Mr. Pitt. During the discussion of its
merits in the House of Commons, Mr. Fox countenanced and justified
the chief promoters of that association; and he received, in return, a
public assurance from them of an inviolable adherence to him singly
and personally. On account of this proceeding, a very great number (I
presume to say not the least grave and wise part) of the Duke of
Portland's friends in Parliament, and many out of Parliament who are of
the same description, have become separated from that time to this
from Mr. Fox's particular cabal,--very few of which cabal are, or ever
have, so much as pretended to be attached to the Duke of Portland, or
to pay any respect to him or his opinions.
4. At the beginning of this session, when the sober part of the nation
was a second time generally and justly alarmed at the progress of the
French arms on the Continent, and at the spreading of their horrid
principles and cabals in England, Mr. Fox did not (as had been usual in
cases of far less moment) call together any meeting of