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.
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