Page:Life of William Shelburne (vol 2).djvu/411

Rh doute: je ne pousserai pas plus loin l'apologie de ma hardiesse; il me semble qu'elle ne peut pas à un certain point être indiscrète, puisqu'elle est fondée sur la conviction de vos vertus: je vous demande sans plus de formules de laisser mon conseiller privé achever mon éducation, et être mon auxiliaire dans le plus grand œuvre qui puisse être confié aux soins des mortels, et je vous prie d'agréer l'assurance sincère de mon respect, de ma reconnaissance et de mon dévouement.

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"This country," wrote Vaughan from Paris, "is in a fever, but not of disease; it is a fever of enthusiasm and feeling": and like most Englishmen of liberal views in the early stages of the Revolution, he was inclined to expect nothing but good from the new order of things. "If the people of different countries," Lord Lansdowne wrote to Bentham, then occupied on a work on Parliamentary tactics intended for the benefit of his friends in France, "could once understand each other, and be brought to adopt half a dozen general principles, their servants would not venture to play such tricks. I hope when you have given France a legislature, you will suffer nothing to interfere and prevent your pen from further enforcing these principles."

It is true that at the very outset of the Revolution, Burke had denounced it and everything appertaining to it with the utmost fury, thereby separating himself from his most intimate political friends; but his denunciations at first roused no echo even in the party over which he had so long exercised a commanding influence. There was no inclination to go to war with France for the sake of an idea; neither sympathy for extreme views, nor fear of them existed. All the circumstances which were soon to arm a desperate mob in France against the institutions of society, were wanting in England. In France the name of the abuses which required reform was legion;