By comparing facts and events, and dates, it is impossible not to believe, that the memorial had some influence in producing some of them. When Courts, Princes, and nations, have been long contemplating a great system of affairs, and their judgments begin to ripen, and they begin to see how things ought to go, and are going, a small publication, holding up these objects in a clear point of view, sometimes sets a vast machine in motion at once like the springing of a mine. What a dust we raise, said the fly upon the chariot wheel? It is impossible to prove, that this whole letter is not a similar delusion to that of the fly. The Councils of Princes are enveloped in impenetrable secrecy. The true motives and causes, which govern their actions, little or great, are carefully concealed. But I desire only that these events may be all combined together, and then, that an impartial judge may say, if he can, that he believes that that homely, harmless memorial had no share in producing any part of this great complication of good. But be all these speculations and conjectures as they will, the foresight of which could not have been sufficiently clear to have justified the measure, it is sufficient for me to say, that the measure was absolutely necessary and unavoidable. I should have been contemptible and ridiculous without it. By it I have secured to myself and my mission universal decency and respect, though no open acknowledgment or avowal. I write this to you in confidence. You may entirely suppress it, or communicate it in confidence, as you judge, for the public good. I might have added, that many gentlemen of letters, of various nations, have expressed their approbation of this measure, I will mention only two. M. d'Alembert and M. Raynal, I am well informed, have expressed their sense of it in terms too flattering for me to repeat. I might add the opinion of many men of letters in this Republic.