Page:History of the Radical Party in Parliament.djvu/77

Rh been before the power of the old Whigs was broken, and before the French Revolution had filled the minds of the people with doubt, and those of their rulers with terror. The very instrument by which alone a change could be effected was in the hands of a class to whom all change was hateful, and by whom it was held to be dangerous.

Such was the position in which the little band which followed Fox found themselves, and they maintained the struggle with wonderful courage. Their only hope was that they might create an effect upon public opinion, and it was inevitable that they should adopt a tone which the calmer members of their party have called violent and democratic. During the remainder of the year 1793 some further efforts were made to arrest the war, but they secured on divisions only between forty and fifty votes, and Parliament was prorogued in June. This year a young man entered Parliament who was destined to exercise an immense influence upon the position and power of parties in England, and to begin a new era in the foreign politics of his country. George Canning, who sat for the first time as member for Newport, in the Isle of Wight, began his career as an admirer and a supporter of Pitt, and he continued faithful for the remainder of the life of the great minister. He was from the beginning a bitter and unscrupulous opponent of Radicals and Radicalism, and attacked them alike with satire and with serious eloquence. Yet he lived to do more harm to Tories and Toryism than he was ever able to accomplish against the objects of his early hatred.

In the year 1794 there was little change in the real strength of parties in Parliament, and none in the policy of repression at home or in the feebleness and extravagance of the conduct of the war. The division in the Whig camp was completed, or rather publicly acknowledged, by the acceptance of office under Pitt by the Duke of Portland and Earls Fitzwilliam and Spencer, which took place in July. Windham had already gone over, led by his admiration for Burke. These accessions to the Government took place