Soon it will be eight months since I have had the honor of hearing from you; I try to flatter myself that it is only due to lack of opportunity on your part, but I fear that I am deluding myself in this respect, given the large number of Englishmen who come in succession to France. Could I have had the misfortune of displeasing you in some way? Although there is no one in the world whose esteem and affection I covet more, I admit that for my part, it has also been five to six months since I have given you the least sign of life and of my attachment to you, but you know my position—the remoteness of my living quarters—and moreover, my compatriots travel far less than yours. Will you then leave for America without addressing us the smallest farewell? Will you not preserve across the seas any memory of a person who is so attached to you, who considers earth’s true paradise the clime that you choose for your dwelling place, where you have made all the sciences and all the virtues multiply, and where he would willingly transplant himself if he were younger, in order to receive lessons of every kind from you there on the banks of the Skuilkil and the Delaware?

The volumes of the Citizen’s Ephemerides, delayed for a long time by the ordinary encumbrances of the book-trade in this country, have been reappearing in quick succession, and here are the nine of them which have come out over the last five months. I am sending you at the same time a copy for Mr. Rush, apart from your own copy, which makes eighteen volumes in all. We have been led to hope that the other volumes will rapidly succeed one another, in view of which I have renewed your subscription.

I had counted on being able to send you, by the same means, my manual on humanity, which was taken from me and held for several months, and which should now at last be published in Bouillon; I have expanded it to ninety-two articles, and I dare to flatter myself that you will find it much improved. In it I broach the biggest questions of politics, and perhaps you will find that I examine them from perspectives which have not yet been introduced to the public; I can at least assure you that I have copied no one in this. I was also hoping to send you a copy of my little work on the peerage, but after having kept me dangling in a humiliating way for a long time, they at last sent me yesterday a pamphlet which they indicated was my work; but I only recognized about half of its contents, and that half was inserted into a sort of political tract concerning the personal affair of a businessman. I have recriminated against this abuse of faith, but I have not yet dared to protest loudly, for fear that after their disfiguration of the work, they may go so far as to mistreat its author too, for what can one count on under a government like ours?

Even so I can assure you that I fear the change by which this very government seems today to be menaced. It seems to our lawyers that the King and the people exist for their sole benefit; that with the vague words of laws referred to broadly and without any explicit citations, they should make sovereign decisions about everything, and soon their yoke will have become more unendurable than that of the proudest despot. What then will be the result of all this? That is something which does not seem to me easy to prejudge.

The Chancellor puts vigorous pressure on the members of Parliament, who put up a pitiful defense, but people’s minds are so universally indisposed that from the Princes of the blood to the fishwives of the market, everything is turning rebellious in favor of Parliament. At this time the depredation of the treasury is at its worst, and how will the King avoid increasing the public burden, or on what will he impose new taxes? And what would he not risk in the midst of such a great fermentation of minds, minds on which one would say there had blown a British wind, from one end of the kingdom to the other? In 1667, Louis XIV made a famous ordinance which forbade his parliaments to make any remonstrance against his laws until after they had registered them, and this ordinance was registered by the parliaments unconditionally and without any protest. Louis [XV], by the edict of last December, permits remonstrances to be made with the registration, provided that these remonstrances are not followed by ceaseless resistance. The lawyers cry that this is a reversal of all the laws, and everyone repeats it, taking the lawyers at their word. This is how things stand with us.

Are the English any wiser? I doubt it, but I hope, for the honor of the human race, that you, with your profound wisdom and happy influence, will prevent the contagion from… [remainder missing].