Thomas Beddoes to the Editor of The Monthly Magazine, 10 October 1797
Sir,
I observe you have quoted from Dr Fourcroy’s eloquent Address to the French Apothecaries, a passage, in which mention is made of a project of mine. For the sake of your foreign readers, I wish to rectify the orator’s mistake. The British administration has not put a shilling ‘at my disposition,’ towards investigating the virtues of the gases. It is, indeed, extraordinary, that it should have entered into the imagination of any mortal, to impute to these men, any such application of the public money. If I ever see M. Fourcroy again, I shall certainly take the liberty of telling him, that in a French legislator, it is shameful not to know their spirit better.
I am sir, yours
T. Beddoes
Clifton, Oct. 10
Published: The Monthly Magazine, 4 (October 1797), 245