her in face of such a crisis that Pitt
looked on the Revolution with any fear. But with the treaty the danger
passed away. In the spring of 1790 Joseph died broken-hearted at the
failure of his plans and the revolt of the Netherlands against his
innovations; Austria practically withdrew from the war with the Turks;
and the young Minister could give free expression to the sympathy with
which the French movement inspired him.

[Sidenote: The French Revolution.]

In France indeed things were moving fast. By breaking down the division
between its separate orders the States-General became a National
Assembly, which abolished the privileges of the provincial parliaments,
of the nobles, and the Church. In October 1789 the mob of Paris marched
on Versailles and forced both King and Assembly to return with them to
the capital; and a Constitution hastily put together was accepted by
Lewis the Sixteenth in the stead of his old despotic power. To Pitt the
tumult and disorder with which these great changes were wrought seemed
transient matters. In January 1790 he still believed that "the present
convulsions in France must sooner or later culminate in general harmony
and regular order," and that when her own freedom was established,
"France would stand forth as one of the most brilliant powers of
Europe." But the coolness and goodwill with which Pitt looked on the
Revolution were far from being universal in the nation at large. The
cautious good sense of the bulk of Englishmen, their love of order and
law, their distaste for violent changes and for abstract theories, as
well as their reverence for the past, were rousing throughout the
country a dislike of the revolutionary changes which were hurrying on
across the Channel; and both the political sense and the political
prejudice of the nation were being fired by the warnings of Edmund
Burke. The fall of the Bastille, though it kindled enthusiasm in Fox,
roused in Burke only distrust. "Whenever a separation is made between
liberty and justice," he wrote a few weeks later, "neither is safe." The
night of the fourth of August, when the privileges of every class were
abolished, filled him with horror. He saw, and rightly saw, in it the
critical moment which revealed the character of the Revolution, and his
part was taken at once. "The French," he cried in January, while Pitt
was foretelling a glorious future for the new Constitution, "the French
have shown themselves the ablest architec