1789.] OPINIONS OF EMINENT MEN. 183 to form one of the most important members of a Tory government advancing towards liberal opinions, was present at the taking of the Bastille, and was a member of one of the Clubs of Paris. In 1823, when he was a candidate for Liverpool, he was accused of having been a member of the Jacobin Club. He denied the charge, but he frankly said, "In the earlier period of my life, when I was about nineteen, I was in France; and if I should then have been misled by a mistaken admiration of what I now think the errors of that revolution, I trust that the ardour of youth would be no discreditable excuse. . . . . I am not ashamed to avow that I was anxious to see a rational system of liberty established in that fine country. . . . . That guilt I share in common with many great and good men. The predilections of Mr. Huskisson did not prevent him receiving the appointment of private secretary to lord Gower, then the British minister at Paris. The destruction of the Bastille was the type of the fall of tyranny to English men and also to English women. Hannah More writes to Horace Walpole, " Poor France! though I am sorry that the lawless rabble are so triumphant, I cannot help hoping that some good will arise from the sum of human misery having been so considerably lessened at one blow, by the destruction of the Bastille." † Dumont says that in England, the most free and the most noble of the nations, the destruction of the Bastille had caused a general joy. He adds, however, what is correct, that the English government had not permitted this event to be celebrated in the theatres. An opera, founded upon the story of the Iron Mask, in which that mystery was blended with a scenic representation of the destruction of the Bastille, was "maimed and mutilated by the licenser. §" As might be expected, Fox was in raptures at the great event of the 14th of July. He writes to Fitzpatrick, on the 30th of that month, "How much the greatest event it is that ever happened in the world, and how much the best." || Even Burke expresses himself soberly, within three weeks after that "greatest event." He writes to lord Charlemont, on the 9th of August, "Our thoughts of everything at home are suspended by our astonishment at the wonderful spectacle which is exhibited in a neighbouring and rival country. What spectators, and what actors! England, gazing with astonishment at a French struggle for liberty, and not knowing whether to blame or to applaud. . . . . The spirit it is impossible not to admire; but the old Parisian ferocity has broken out in a shocking manner."¶ There was another remarkable Englishman, of French extraction, who had seen much of France, was intimate with Mirabeau, and who attempted, though French vanity rendered the attempt useless, to imbue the National Assembly, through Dumont, with some respect for salutary forms, established by the experience of the English Parliament. Samuel Romilly, then in his thirty-second year, wrote thus to Dumont, on the 28th of July, 1789:-"I am sure I need not tell you how much I have rejoiced at the revolution which has taken place. I think of nothing else, and please myself with 184 FLUCTUATIONS OF ENGLISH OPINION. [1789. endeavouring to guess at some of the important consequences which must follow throughout all Europe. I think myself happy that it has happened when I am of an age at which I may reasonably hope to live to see some of those consequences produced. It will perhaps surprise you, but it is certainly true, that the Revolution has produced a very sincere and very general joy here. It is the subject of all conversations; and even all the newspapers, without one exception, though they are not conducted by the most liberal or the most philosophical of men, join in sounding forth the praises of the Parisians, and in rejoicing at an event so important for mankind." The news of the murder of Foulon and his son-in-law somewhat abates his enthu siasm. When the events of the 6th of October were known in England, he dreads the removal of the National Assembly to Paris: "I fear for the freedom of debate in the midst of a people so turbulent, so quick to take alarm, and so much disposed to consider the most trifling circumstances as proofs of a conspiracy formed againt them." He had seen France during a rapid visit in September, and had ventured an opinion that "the horizon was overcast." In October he writes, to express what is a presentiment of a coming change in English feeling: "I find the favour with which the popular cause in France is considered here, much less than it was when I quitted England. We begin to judge you with too much severity; but the truth is, that you taught us to expect too much, and that we are disappointed | and chagrined at not seeing those expectations fulfilled.” † The interest excited by the Revolution was not confined to the higher circles, metropolitan or provincial. Arthur Young, complaining in August of the apparent indifference to political affairs, as exhibited in their conversa tion, of the French in towns through which he passed, says, "The ignorance of the stupidity of these people must be absolutely incredible. Not a week i passes without their country abounding with events that are analyzed and ! debated by the carpenters and blacksmiths of England." This was the result of what he frequently laments, the want of that rapid and easy communi cation which almost every part of our island enjoyed. The carpenters and blacksmiths of England had some prejudices corrected by the early struggles of the French to be better governed. Their old notion of the subjects of the Grand Monarque was, that they ate frogs and wore wooden shoes; that they were a starved people, who had not spirit to resist their oppressors. Hogarth appealed to the popular notions when he published his prints of "The Invasion" in 1756, and wrote under them certain patriotic lines about "lanthorn-jaw and croaking gut," and "the hungry slaves have smelt our food." There is a remarkable testimony to a change in the popular feeling, supplied by an intelligent foreigner in 1790:-"The French used to be the great object of English national dislike and jealousy; but this seems now to be greatly abated, especially since the late revolution in France has given the English rather a more respectful opinion of the French nation." ‡ The beginning of the year 1790 presents a singular contrast between the aspect of the Parliament of England and of the National Assembly of France. On the 21st of January, George III. opened the Session with a "Memoirs," p. 272. 1790.] LOUIS GOES TO THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 185 royal speech which notices "the interruption of the tranquillity of other countries;" and expresses his majesty's deep and grateful sense of the favour of Providence, in continuing to his subjects "the inestimable advantages of peace, and the uninterrupted enjoyment of the invaluable blessings which they have so long derived from our excellent constitution." On the 4th of February, Louis XVI. went to the National Assembly, which held its sitting in the Salle du Manège, near the Tuileries, and addressed the deputies in very remarkable words, indicative not only of his acquiescence in the great changes. which the Assembly had decreed, but of his earnest desire to unite with them in building up a solid and enduring fabric of public liberty. The Assembly, during the four months in which it had sat at Paris, had passed some sweeping measures of reform. The most important was that of a new territorial division of the kingdom. The old boundaries of provinces, with their various and conflicting systems of administration, were swept away; and France was distributed into eighty-three departments, with each its subdivision of districts and cantons. Throughout France one system of administration, under municipal functionaries to be chosen by the people, was established. The king declared to the Assembly that ten years previous he had desired to substitute some general system of administration for one founded upon ancient customs; but to the Assembly was due the grand idea, the salutary change, of the new departmental division, which he would second by all the means in his power. The privileges of the nobility had been destroyed-feudal rights had been abolished-during the sittings of Versailles. A change of equal importance had since taken place. The question of church property, which in France was of enormous amount, had been warmly debated in the early sittings of the Assembly. Talleyrand, bishop of Autun, contended that the nation had the right of making a new disposition of that property; the Abbé Maury maintained that the proprietary rights of the clergy should be preserved inviolate. On the 2nd of November, it was carried by a large majority that all ecclesiastical property is at the disposal of the nation, but charged with a suitable provision for the expenses of religious worship, for the support of the ministers of religion, and for the relief of the poor. A better income than previously existed was to be provided for the inferior clergy. The religious houses were also suppressed, but provision was to be made for their inmates, whose vows were declared no longer binding. The king, on the 4th of February, expressed in words of no common force, his adoption of these changes, which were essentially a Revolution. "In concert with the queen, who partakes all my sentiments, I will at the proper time prepare the mind and the heart of my son for the new order of things that circumstances have brought about." The address of the king worked up the excitable Parisians to a fever-fit of constitutional loyalty, manifested in universal oath-taking and illuminations, each district having its own swearing and its candles in the windows. Nevertheless, Journalism, and Clubs, and secret advisers in the Tuileries, soon clouded this" day-star of liberty;" and Englishmen generally felt that they were safer from storms under that tutelary genius which George III. invoked on all occasions, "our excellent Constitution." The time was approaching when those amongst us who looked with apprehension upon The speech is given in Thiers' "Révolution Française," note 15. VOL. VII, 186 SESSION OF THE BRITISH PARLIAMENT. (1790. the French Revolution, should be violently opposed to those who as violently became its partisans. The progress of this conflict of opinions was very gradual; but the tendencies towards a rupture of the old ties of one great political party were soon manifest. The distinctions of Whig and Tory would speedily be obliterated. Those who clung to the most liberal interpretation of the principles upon which our Revolution of 1688 was founded, would be pointed at as Jacobins-the title which became identified with all that was most revolting in the French Revolution. The Tory became the Anti-Jacobin. Thus, through ten years of social bitterness, execration and persecution made England and Scotland very unpleasant dwelling-places for men who dared to think and speak openly. Democratic opinions, even in their mildest form, were proscribed, not by a political party only, but by the majority of the people. Liberty and Jacobinism were held to be synonymous. Burke, Fox, and Sheridan, from the commencement of the administration of Pitt, had been closely united as the chief leaders of the Whigs. They had been brought intimately together as managers of the impeachment of Hastings, whose trial at the commencement of the Session of 1790 had been proceeding for two years. Fox and Burke had cordially joined with Wilberforce, who was supported by Pitt, in taking a prominent part in advocating the total abolition of the Slave Trade, in 1789. On the 5th of February, 1790, when the army estimates were moved, Mr. Pitt held that it was necessary, on account of the turbulent situation of the greater part of the continent, that we should be prepared for war, though he trusted the system uniformly pursued by ministers would lead to a long continuance of peace. Mr. Fox opposed the estimates on the ground of economy alone. He had no dread of the increase of the army in a constitutional point of view. "The example of a neighbouring nation had proved that former imputations on armies were unfounded calumnies; and it was now universally known throughout all Europe that a man by becoming a soldier did not cease to be a citizen." On the 9th of February, when the Report on the Army Estimates was brought up, Mr. Burke proclaimed, in the most emphatic terms, his views on the affairs of France. He opposed an increase of our military force. He held that France, in a political light, was to be considered as expunged out of the system of Europe. "Since the House had been prorogued in the summer much work was done in France. The French had shown themselves the ablest architects of ruin that had hitherto existed in the world. In that very short space of time they had completely pulled down to the ground, their monarchy; their church; their nobility; their law; their revenue; their army; their navy; their commerce; their arts; and their manufactures. They had done their business for us, as rivals, in a way in which twenty Ramilies and Blenheims could never have done." Burke held that, in this fallen condition, it was not easy to determine whether France could ever appear again as a leading power. Six years afterwards he described the views he formerly entertained as those of "common speculators." He says, deprived of the old government, deprived in a manner of all government, France, fallen as a monarchy, to common speculators might have appeared more likely to be an object of pity or insult, according to the disposition of the circumjacent powers, than to be the scourge and terror of them all.” * Burke's alarm, in 1790, was not an appre * "Letters on a Regicide Peace," Letter i. 1796. 1790.] DIVISIONS IN THE WHIG PARTY-THE TEST ACT. 187 hension of France as a military power. In the age of Louis XIV. we were in danger of being entangled by the example of France in the net of a relentless despotism. "Our present danger, from the example of a people whose character knows no medium, is, with regard to government, a danger from anarchy; a danger of being led, through an admiration of successful fraud and violence, to an imitation of the excesses of an irrational, unprincipled, proscribing, confiscating, plundering, ferocious, bloody, and tyrannical democracy." He went on to say, that," in his opinion, the very worst part of the example set is in the late assumption of citizenship by the army." With the highest compliments to the masterly understanding and benevolent disposition of his friend, he regretted that Mr. Fox had dropped a word expressive of exultation at the conduct of the French army. He had no difference about the abstract principle whether the soldiers were to forget they were citizens. In France, where the abstract principle was clothed with its circumstances, he thought what was done there furnished no matter for exultation, either in the act or the example. Mr. Fox, in reply, avowed his deep obligations for the improvement he had derived from his friend's instruction and conversation. From him he had learnt more than from all the men with whom he had ever conversed. His friend might be assured that they could never differ in principles, however they might differ in their application. He maintained his opinion of the conduct of the French soldiers as men who, "feelingly alive to a sense of the oppressions under which their countrymen had groaned, disobeyed the despotic commands of their leaders, and gallantly espoused the cause of their fellow-citizens." It was manifest that the difference between the two great orators was something more than the application of principles. The respect which each felt for the understanding of the other prevented, at that time, a stronger expression of the thoughts that were tearing them asunder. A smaller man interfered in the friendly contention; and then the Whig ranks were first broken by Burke's war-cry. Sheridan elaborately defended the proceedings of the National Assembly, apologized for the excesses of the French populace, and charged Burke with being the advocate of despotism. Burke rose, and declared, as an inevitable necessity, that henceforth his honourable friend and he were separated in politics. The influence of the French Revolution upon great questions of our domestic policy was very soon manifested in the proceedings of Parliament. In 1789, a bill for the relief of Protestant Dissenters was rejected by a very small majority. During the prorogation, the Dissenters had agitated for the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts, with unwonted earnestness and considerable indiscretion. Some of the Establishment were equally zealous in the encouragement of a resistance to the claims of the Dissenters. Mr. Fox, on the 2nd of March, proposed the abolition of these religious tests. Mr. Pitt opposed the motion. Mr. Burke declared that had the repeal been moved for ten years before, he should probably have joined Mr. Fox in supporting it. But he had the strongest reasons to believe that many of the persons now calling themselves Dissenters, and who stood the most forward in the present application for relief, were men of factious and dangerous. principles, actuated by no motives of religion or conscience, to which tolerance could in any rational sense be applied. The motion was rejected by a very large majority. Two days after, a proposition made by Mr. Flood, to amend |