I am authorized to say for Mr. Burke, that he considers that cause assigned for the outrage offered to him as ten times worse than the outrage itself.  There is such a strange confusion of ideas on this subject, that it is far more difficult to understand the nature of the charge than to refute it when understood.  Mr. Fox’s friends were, it seems, seized with a sudden panic terror lest he should pass for a republican.  I do not think they had any ground for this apprehension.  But let us admit they had.  What was there in the Quebec Bill, rather than in any other, which could subject him or them to that imputation?  Nothing in a discussion of the French Constitutions which might arise on the Quebec Bill, could tend to make Mr. Fox pass for a republican, except he should take occasion to extol that state of things in France which affects to be a republic or a confederacy of republics.  If such an encomium could make any unfavorable impression on the king’s mind, surely his voluntary panegyrics on that event, not so much introduced as intruded into other debates, with which they had little relation, must have produced that effect with much more certainty and much greater force.  The Quebec Bill, at worst, was only one of those opportunities carefully sought and industriously improved by himself.  Mr. Sheridan had already brought forth a panegyric on the French system in a still higher strain, with full as little demand from the nature of the business before the House, in a speech too good to be speedily forgotten.  Mr. Fox followed him without any direct call from the subject-matter, and upon the same ground.  To canvass the merits of the French Constitution on the Quebec Bill could not draw forth any opinions which were not brought forward before, with no small ostentation, and with very little of necessity, or perhaps of propriety.  What mode or what time of discussing the conduct of the French faction in England would not equally tend to kindle this enthusiasm, and afford those occasions for panegyric, which, far from shunning, Mr. Fox has always industriously sought?  He himself said, very truly, in the debate, that no artifices were necessary to draw from him his opinions upon that subject.  But to fall upon Mr. Burke for making an use, at worst not more irregular, of the same liberty, is tantamount to a plain declaration that the topic of Franco is tabooed or forbidden ground to Mr. Burke, and to Mr. Burke alone.  But surely Mr. Fox is not a republican; and what should hinder him, when such a discussion came on, from clearing himself unequivocally (as his friends say he had done near a fortnight before) of all such imputations?  Instead of being a disadvantage to him, he would have defeated all his enemies, and Mr. Burke, since he has thought proper to reckon him amongst them.