fident, unsparing, immoderate criticism
which both preceded and followed this truly rational exposition of the
danger of advising, in cases where we know neither the men nor the
opportunities. Why was savage and unfaltering denunciation any less
unbecoming than, as he admits, crude prescriptions would have been
unbecoming?

By the end of 1791, when he wrote the _Thoughts on French Affairs_,
he had penetrated still farther into the essential character of the
Revolution. Any notion of a reform to be effected after the decorous
pattern of 1688, so conspicuous in the first great manifesto, had
wholly disappeared. The changes in France he allowed to bear little
resemblance or analogy to any of those which had been previously
brought about in Europe. It is a revolution, he said, of doctrine and
theoretic dogma. The Reformation was the last revolution of this sort
which had happened in Europe; and he immediately goes on to remark
a point of striking resemblance between them. The effect of the
Reformation was "to introduce other interests into all countries than
those which arose from their locality and natural circumstances."
In like manner other sources of faction were now opened, combining
parties among the inhabitants of different countries into a single
connection. From these sources, effects were likely to arise fully
as important as those which had formerly arisen from the jarring
interests of the religious sects. It is a species of faction which
"breaks the locality of public affections."[1]

[Footnote 1: De Tocqueville has unconsciously imitated Burke's very
phrases. "Toutes les revolutions civiles et politiques ont eu une
patrie, et s'y sont enfermees. La Revolution. francaise ... on l'a vue
rapprocher ou diviser les hommes en depit des lois, des traditions,
des caracteres, de langue, rendant parfois ennemis des compatriotes,
et freres des etrangers; _ou plutot elle a forme audessus de toutes
les nationalites particulieres, une patrie intellectuelle commune dont
les hommes de toutes les nations ont pu devenir citoyens_."--Ancien
Regime, p. 15.]

He was thus launched on the full tide of his policy. The French
Revolution must be hemmed in by a cordon of fire. Those who
sympathised with it in England must be gagged, and if gagging did not
suffice, they must be taught respect for the constitution in dungeons
and on the gallows. His cry for war abroad and harsh coercion at home
waxed louder every day. As Fox said, it w