ocates,
monks, and editors of struggling journals, were suddenly seen in the
first offices of state, wielding the whole power of the mightiest
kingdom of the Continent, absorbing its revenues, directing its armies,
and moving in the rank of princes among the proud hereditary
sovereignties of the world. To the crowd of unprincipled men, engendered
by the habits of European life, and their consciousness of abilities
fully equal to those which had won such opulent enjoyments and lofty
distinctions in France, the success of the Revolution was an universal
summons to conspiracy. On the Continent that conspiracy was, according
to the habits of the people, crafty and concealed. In England, equally
according to the habits of the people, it was bold and public, daring
and defying. Great meetings of the population were held in the open air;
committees of grievance were appointed; correspondences were spread
through the country; the whole machinery of overthrow was openly
erected, and worked by visible hands. Even where secresy was deemed
useful by the more cautious or the more fearful, it was of a different
character from the assassin-like secresy of the foreign insurgent; it
was more the solemn and regulated observance of a secret tribunal. The
papers which have transpired of those secret committees have all the
forms of diplomacy, combined with a determination of language, and an
intensity of purpose, which would do honour to a nobler cause. But the
contest was now at hand, and on three men in England depended the
championship of the monarchy. These three were the King, the Minister,
and the Attorney-General. There were never three individuals more
distinctly, and we shall scarcely hesitate to say, more providentially,
prepared to meet the crisis. George III., a sovereign of the most
constitutional principles, and of the most unshaken intrepidity; William
Pitt, the most sagacious and the most resolute statesman that England
had ever seen, formed by his manly eloquence to rule the legislature,
and, by his character for integrity, to obtain the full confidence of
the empire; and Sir John Scott, at once wise, calm, and bold, profoundly
learned in his profession, personally brave, and alike incapable of
yielding to the menaces of party or the corruptions of power. It is not
to be forgotten, as a portion of that genuine public respect which in
England is always withheld from even the most shining personal gifts,
when stained by priva