o thought that Burke was right in his views on the Revolution,
and right in expressing them, still could not forgive the open
catastrophe, and for many months all the old habits of intimacy among
them were entirely broken off.

Burke did not bend to the storm. He went down to Margate, and there
finished the _Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs_. Meanwhile he
despatched his son to Coblenz to give advice to the royalist exiles,
who were then mainly in the hands of Calonne, one of the very worst
of the ministers whom Louis XVI. had tried between his dismissal of
Turgot in 1774, and the meeting of the States-General in 1789. This
measure was taken at the request of Calonne, who had visited Burke at
Margate. The English Government did not disapprove of it, though they
naturally declined to invest either young Burke or any one else with
authority from themselves. As little came of the mission as might have
been expected from the frivolous, unmanly, and enraged spirit of those
to whom it was addressed.

In August (1791), while Richard Burke was at Coblenz, the _Appeal_ was
published. This was the last piece that Burke wrote on the Revolution,
in which there is any pretence of measure, sobriety, and calm judgment
in face of a formidable and perplexing crisis. Henceforth it is not
political philosophy, but the minatory exhortation of a prophet.
We deal no longer with principles and ideas, but with a partisan
denunciation of particular acts, and a partisan incitement to a given
practical policy. We may appreciate the policy as we choose, but our
appreciation of Burke as a thinker and a contributor to political
wisdom is at an end. He is now only Demosthenes thundering against
Philip, or Cicero shrieking against Mark Antony.

The _Reflections_ had not been published many months before Burke
wrote the _Letter to a Member of the National Assembly_ (January
1791), in which strong disapproval had grown into furious hatred. In
contains the elaborate diatribe against Rousseau, the grave panegyric
on Cromwell for choosing Hale to be Chief Justice, and a sound
criticism on the laxity and want of foresight in the manner in which
the States-General had been convened. Here first Burke advanced to the
position that it might be the duty of other nations to interfere
to restore the king to his rightful authority, just as England and
Prussia had interfered to save Holland from confusion, as they had
interfered to preserve the hereditary cons