Page:History of the Radical Party in Parliament.djvu/64

50 until then unknown in France. The violent proceedings of the end of the year 1789, the march upon Versailles, and the seizure of the King and the royal family, began to produce a feeling at first of disgust and then of horror in the minds of many Englishmen. Amongst the first to give expression to these sentiments was Burke. To his philosophic intellect it was clear that no permanent progress in liberty or in well-being could result from the unregulated violence of the city mobs who were making themselves masters of the destinies of France. He did not realize the fact that to break down the terrible despotism of Crown and nobles, by which the condition of the people of France had been made a perpetual slavery, and their lives one long and hopeless misery, a passionate national effort was necessary; and if he did admit the fact, he would have still thought that the method of its overthrow was at once wicked and unwise. So he became the mouthpiece not only of the few who, like himself, loving practical liberty, loved also the ancient forms by which it had been limited and regulated, but of the more numerous class of all ranks to whom any change at all was hateful, and violent change appalling. It was in the beginning of the year 1790 that Burke's difference with his old friend Fox was first publicly manifested. In January of that year Fox praised the French army for its sympathy with the popular cause, and on the 9th of the following month he spoke in favour of the Revolution generally. Burke immediately replied, and denounced the Revolution in the most bitter and contemptuous terms. No open breach occurred at that time, but it was felt to be inevitable, and every day saw an increase of the number of Whigs who were prepared to go with Burke. On the 4th of March an application was made by Mr. Flood to bring in a bill for Parliamentary reform. Pitt strongly opposed it, although he admitted that it resembled the scheme which he had himself once introduced. The old argument of inopportuneness was used, and Burke, Wilberforce, Grenville, Windham, and Powys having spoken against it, and Fox in support, it was withdrawn without a division.