te profligacy, that those three were wholly and
alike above the breath of slander. The king, eminent for domestic
virtue; Pitt, unstained by even an imputation; and Scott, fondly
attached to his wife and family.

In January 1793, the cruel murder of the innocent and unfortunate Louis
XVI. had been perpetrated by the National Convention--an act which
Napoleon long afterwards pronounced "a grand political error; sufficient
to stamp the government not merely with guilt, but with infatuation."
The French minister at the Court of St James's was ordered to leave the
country, and war was proclaimed. The revolutionary committees in England
now assumed increased activity. Communications were established between
them and the Jacobin government; and while France prepared for War,
English republicanism prepared for revolution. The time of the struggle
was fully come. The English minister now buckled on his armour. A
succession of vigorous measures employed the legislature during the
whole period; they were fiercely combated, but they were all ultimately
carried. Opposition never exhibited more brilliant parliamentary powers.
Fox was matchless in declamation, alternately solemn and touching;
Sheridan, Grey, and a long list of practised and indefatigable talent,
were in perpetual debate; but Pitt, "with huge two-handed sway", finally
crushed them all. The classic illustration of Hercules destroying the
Hydra, was frequently used to express the solitary prowess of this
extraordinary man in resisting the multiplied, wily, and envenomed
attacks of his opponents; and he realized the fable to the full--he
not merely crushed the heads, but he seared them. He extinguished that
principle of evil increase, by which all the efforts of foreign
governments had been baffled in their contests with Jacobinism; and in
the midst of an empire at all times inclined to look with jealousy on
power, and at that moment nervous for the suspended privileges of its
constitution, Pitt utterly extinguished the Whigs. Fox was defeated so
hopelessly, that he gave up Parliament altogether, and his party
followed his example. Pitt had not merely cut down the statelier trunks
of Opposition, but he had swept away the brushwood, and smote the ground
with sterility. His bold enterprise had not merely taken the citadel Of
faction by storm, and driven its defenders, faint-hearted and fugitive,
over the face of the land, but he had sown the foundations with salt.
The tota