ts of ruin who have hitherto
existed in the world. In a short space of time they have pulled to the
ground their army, their navy, their commerce, their arts and their
manufactures."

[Sidenote: Pitt and France.]

But in Parliament Burke stood alone. The Whigs, though distrustfully,
followed Fox in his applause of the Revolution. The Tories, yet more
distrustfully, followed Pitt; and Pitt warmly expressed his sympathy
with the constitutional government which was ruling France. At this
moment indeed the more revolutionary party in that country gave a signal
proof of its friendship for England. Irritated by an English settlement
at Nootka Sound in California, Spain appealed to France for aid in
accordance with the Family Compact; and the French Ministry, with a
party at its back which believed things had gone far enough, resolved on
a war as the best means of checking the progress of the Revolution and
restoring the power of the Crown. The revolutionary party naturally
opposed this design; and after a bitter struggle the right of declaring
war, save with the sanction of the Assembly, was taken from the king.
With this vote all danger of hostilities passed away. "The French
Government," Pitt asserted, "was bent on cultivating the most unbounded
friendship for Great Britain," and he saw no reason in its revolutionary
changes why Britain should not return the friendship of France. What
told even more on his temper towards that country was a conviction that
nothing but the joint action of France and England would in the end
arrest the troubles of Eastern Europe. His intervention foiled for the
moment a fresh effort of Prussia to rob Poland of Dantzig and Thorn. But
though Russia was still pressing Turkey hard, a Russian war was so
unpopular in England that a hostile vote in Parliament forced Pitt to
discontinue his armaments; and a fresh union of Austria and Prussia,
which promised at this juncture to bring about a close of the Turkish
struggle, promised also a fresh attack on the independence of Poland. To
prevent a new partition without the co-operation of France was
impossible; and in the existing state of things Pitt saw nothing to
hinder the continuance of a friendship which would make such a
co-operation inevitable.

[Sidenote: Burke and the Revolution.]

But while Pitt was pleading for friendship between the two countries,
Burke was resolved to make friendship impossible. In Parliament, as we
have seen, he stood a