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CHAPTER V.

GEORGE III. (CONTINUED).

1789-1802.

The French revolution;-its effect in England.-War with France.-Lord Howe's victory.-Mutiny in the navy.-Battles of St. Vincent and Camperdown.-State of Ireland.-United Irishmen.-Irish rebellion.-Union with Ireland. Battle of the Nile ;-of Copenhagen ;-of Alexandria.-Peace of Amiens.

WE are now arrived at the most awful and important period in the history of man; a period, when a nation of slaves, acting under the impulse of men, some of philanthropic but unenlightened views and of inexperience in the great science of politics, but others devoid of principle and seeking only for change, in the hope of profiting in the confusion, flung off the bonds of ages, and madly plunged into the chaos of turbulence and anarchy. The French Revolution, of which we now speak, burst forth like a moral volcano, shaking the stability of the most ancient thrones, overwhelming justice, law and equity, in its career, and after involving Europe in a calamitous war of nearly a quartercentury, terminated in the national humiliation of the conquest of France by those monarchs who had felt her insolence and suffered by her power in the days of her strength.

To narrate the events of this revolution would be beside Suffice it to say, that it owed its origin to our purpose. the absurd privileges of the nobility and their galling insolence; to the heavy and unequal weight of taxation laid on the unprivileged classes; to the corruption and profligacy of the court; to the enormous wealth and often scandalous lives of the superior clergy; to the writings of the so-styled

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philosophers which sapped the foundations of religion and morality; to the short-sighted policy of the government, who, out of mean jealousy of England, encouraged the revolt of her colonies, and sent their troops to receive the revolutionary infection, and to other causes which we need not enumerate. Its atrocities, not to be paralleled, arose from the natural character of the French people, of which a part is intense selfishness and the absence of moral courage*; for the coward is cruel, and the moral coward, it would seem, even more than so than the physical one. In every event of the revolution, in every character, from the king down to the lowest ruffian of the Fauxbourgs, the influence of this last principle may be traced. Men were dragged like sheep to the guillotine; they died like heroes; but they had not the mental energy to combine and crush, as they might, by well-directed efforts, the ferocious bandits by whom they were slaughtered. Above all deserving of contempt and execration were the nobles, whose insolence had been a chief cause of the evil, but who in the moment of agony abandoned their king, and fled by thousands to seek the aid of foreign powers, instead of boldly facing the demon of discord at home, and crushing it by efforts of united energy, justice, and patriotism. How different was the conduct of the English nobility and gentry in the struggles of the seventeenth century! But herein lies the great difference of the national characters; and if the British aristocracy is fated to fall beneath the tyranny of democracy, (which God avert!) it will fall, we may be confident, without dishonour.

In England, the progress of the French revolution was viewed with different eyes by different men. There is a class of people who are easily beguiled by specious terms; to these the word liberty came associated with visions of social happiness and national blessings. They viewed in the revolution of France the commencement of a golden

* Hence their adoption of the ballot in elections and in the votes of their legislature.

age, the return of Astræa to earth, the dawn of the day which would shed peace and tranquillity over the whole earth. But there were others who were anxious to convert the balanced constitution of England into a pure democracy; and there was that profligate class to be found in all countries, who devoid alike of religion, morals, and property, rejoice in the prospect of going a-wrecking in the political tempest. It was chiefly among the dissenters that the members of the first two classes were to be found; they had always a strong leaven of republicanism in their body; they had shown it openly since the commencement of the American war; and we may safely predict, that if ever England becomes a democratic republic, they will be active agents in the change*.

On the other hand, the whole tory party viewed the revolution with unmingled horror and disgust. They soon found themselves joined by an ally in the cause of true liberty and the constitution, whose powers in such a cause were without a parallel. Edmund Burke, to whom, on this occasion, his very prejudices combined with his profound study of history in a philosophic spirit to give the vision of a prophet respecting the ultimate effects of the political changes now going on in France, early denounced them as fraught with ruin to the civilized world. When parliament met in February 1790, Mr. Fox, in the spirit of party, pronounced a eulogy on the proceedings in France, commend

* Among these the Unitarians were most prominent. Dr. Priestley, a man of virtue, but of too multifarious pursuits, who would fain unite in his person the chemist, the divine, the statesman, etc., distinguished himself by his absurd predictions of the millennium to commence with the French revolution. Dr. Price, another most excellent man, was also led away by his imagination; and it almost chills one's blood to think of him in his pulpit, when preaching before the Revolution Society, of which he was an active member, saying, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation," in allusion to the noted 6th of October. If lord Clarendon's remark of clergymen, that they "understand the least and take the worst measure of human affairs of all mankind that can write and read," be correct, we may say that it applies with peculiar force to dissenting teachers, whose education and habits of life tend greatly to disqualify them for the discussion of political questions.

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ing among other things the dishonourable revolt of the French guards. The house expressed strong indignation at such language, and a few days after (9th) Mr. Burke, having adverted to the danger of such opinions going forth sanctioned by so great a name, proceeded to animadvert on the revolution. "The French," said he, "have shown themselves the ablest architects of ruin that have hitherto appeared in the world; in one short summer they have pulled down their monarchy, their church, their nobility, their law, their army, and their revenue." "Our present danger," he added, " is that of being led from admiration to imitate the excesses of a people, whose government is anarchy, whose religion is atheism." He reprobated the comparison between that event and the revolution in England; he said he never loved despotism in any land, but there was a despotism more dreadful than that of any monarch of a civilized people—that " of an unprincipled, ferocious, tyrannical democracy; of a democracy which had not a single virtue of republicanism to redeem its crimes. This was so far from being worthy of imitation, as had been said by his honourable friend, that it was worthy of all abhorrence; and he would spend the last drop of his blood, would quit his best friends, and join his most avowed enemies, to oppose the least influence of such a spirit in England." Mr. Burke had now taken his ground for life; it was plain that a schism must ensue in the whig-party. Sheridan inveighed against, Fox tried to soothe, the excited orator; but the breach had commenced, and on the 16th of May in the following year, Mr. Burke, in presence of the house, renounced the friendship of Mr. Fox, and their connexion terminated for ever. With Burke, the duke of of Portland, earls Spencer and Fitzwilliam, lord Grenville, Mr. Windham, and other whigs who preferred their country to their party, seceded from it, and gave their support to the minister.

By the publication of his immortal Reflections on the Revolution, and by other writings as well as speeches, Mr.

Burke rendered most essential services to his country in exposing the arts of the French demagogues to public view*. Dr. Priestley and other revolutionists vainly attempted to reply. The Rights of Man, by Thomas Paine, was the work among them which was best calculated to poison the minds of the lower people, being written with much ability and adapted to their comprehension; even at the present day it continues its deleterious operation. The Vindicia Gallica of Mr. (afterwards sir James) Mackintosh attempted also the defence of the revolutionists of France and their admirers in this country. But the nature of this writer was too generous and humane, his love of liberty too pure, for him long to remain under an illusion in which the warmth of his feelings and imagination had involved him. The "admiration," to use his own expressions, "due to splendid exertions of virtue and of triumph, inspired by widening prospects of happiness," and the vision of regenerated France "seeking a new glory and a new splendour under the shadow of freedom in cultivating the arts of peace and extending the happiness of mankind,”—vanished before the appalling realities of the Reign of Terror; and the virtuous author become a convert to him whose arguments he had so vigorously combated.

The admirers of the French revolution in many of the great towns of England, having resolved to celebrate the 14th of July, the anniversary of the destruction of the Bastile, a party of about eighty or ninety persons met for that purpose at Birmingham†; but the house in which they were assembled was surrounded by a riotous mob, hissing, groaning and shouting 'Church and King! They at length broke in, but the company had prudently di

*While thus praising these writings of Mr. Burke, we do not by any means assent to all the principles which they contain.

The president was Mr. Keir, a man distinguished for his attainments in chemistry and patural science. As far as our observation has extended, men of science make most wretched politicians; worse than even lawyers and manufacturers.