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 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