ent of Russia and
Prussia, and friendship with France seemed more possible under an
enlightened constitution than under a despotic king. While Burke, who
could only make the House of Commons smile and sneer by his denunciations
{302} of Jacobin intrigues and his display of Jacobin daggers, was
playing on the heart-strings of England and reviving all the old
hostility to France, Pitt pursued as long as he was allowed to pursue it
a policy of absolute neutrality. But he was not long allowed to pursue
that policy, although he reaped some reward for it in a proof that the
French Government appreciated his intentions and shared his desire for
friendship. An English settlement at Nootka Sound, in Vancouver Island,
had been interfered with by Spain. England was ready to assert her
rights in arms. Spain appealed to France for her aid by the terms of the
Family Compact. The French King and the French Ministers were willing
enough to engage in a war with England, in the hope of diverting the
course and weakening the power of the Revolution. But the National
Assembly, after a long and angry struggle, took away from the King the
old right to declare war, save with the consent of the National Assembly,
which consent the National Assembly, in that particular crisis, was
decided not to give. Pitt was delighted at this proof of the friendly
spirit of the French people and the advantage of his principle of
neutrality. But he was not able to act upon that principle. The forces
brought against him were too many and too potent for him to resist. From
the King on the throne to the mob in the streets, who sacked the houses
of citizens known to be in sympathy with the Revolution, the English
people as a whole were against him. The people who sympathized with the
Revolution, who made speeches for it in Westminster and formed
Constitutional Clubs which framed addresses of friendship to France, were
but a handful in the House of Commons, were but a handful in the whole
country. Their existence dazzled and deluded the French Revolutionists
into the belief that the heart of England was with them at a time when
every feeling of self-interest and of sentiment in England was against
them. Pitt clung desperately to peace. He thought, what the Opposition
thought then and for long years later, that it was wisest to leave France
to settle her internal affairs and her form of government in her own way.
When England {303} no longer had an amba