have seen how nobly Pitt rebuked prejudices such as this; but he knew
that nothing could so effectively dispel it as increased intercourse
between nation and nation. In 1787 therefore he concluded a Treaty of
Commerce with France which enabled subjects of both countries to reside
and travel in either without licence or passport, did away with all
prohibition of trade on either side, and reduced every import duty.

[Sidenote: England and Europe.]

The immediate result of this treaty was a great increase of trade
between France and England; and brief as its course was fated to be, it
at once set Pitt on a higher level than any rival statesman of his time.
But the spirit of humanity which breathed through his policy had to
wrestle with difficulties both at home and abroad. No measure secured a
warmer support from the young Minister than the bill for the suppression
of the slave-trade; but in 1788 it was defeated by the vigorous
opposition of the trading classes and the prejudice of the people at
large. His efforts to sap the enmity of nation against nation by a freer
intercourse encountered a foe even more fatal than English prejudice, in
the very movement of which his measures formed a part. Across the
Channel this movement was growing into a revolution which was to change
the face of the world. That such a revolution must one day come, every
observer who had compared the state of Europe with that of England had
long seen to be inevitable. So far as England was concerned, the Puritan
resistance of the seventeenth century had in the end succeeded in
checking the general tendency of the time to religious and political
despotism. Since the Revolution of 1688 freedom of conscience and the
people's right to govern itself through its representatives in
Parliament had been practically established. Social equality had begun
long before. Every man from the highest to the lowest was subject to,
and protected by, the same law. The English aristocracy, though
exercising a powerful influence on government, were possessed of few
social privileges, and hindered from forming a separate class in the
nation by the legal and social tradition which counted all save the
eldest son of a noble house as commoners. No impassable line parted the
gentry from the commercial classes, and these again possessed no
privileges which could part them from the lower classes of the
community. Public opinion, the general sense of educated Englishmen, had
es