ABSTRACT

This contribution, from Sir Brooke Boothby, amounts to a timely coup for The Anti-Jacobin. ‘Brissot’s ghost’, in Issue no. XXV, hoped to convert moderates of the opposite party. Here is one such, in the person of Sir Boothby, freely admitting his former differences, and as freely joining the anti-jacobins in condemning the present régime in France. Boothby wrote a rebuke to Burke’s Reflections, in 1791, and followed this with Observations on the Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, and on Mr. Paine’s Rights of Man (London, 1792). This last publication situates him precisely in the position of those on board Tooke’s coach who are unwilling to travel any further in the company of Paine. He first observes that:

The French Revolution furnishes sufficient matter for admiration; merit more than enough to satisfy its errors and imperfections; for after all, excess of freedom is a glorious fault.

And then immediately continues, of Paine:

But this man has falsely and maliciously endeavoured to apply the principles of that revolution to subvert the excellent constitution of this country, and this must not be silently endured. 1