e no way with the
country, and produced no effect. Horne Tooke was its most conspicuous
chief, and nobody pretended to fear the subversion of the realm by
Horne Tooke. Yet Burke, in letters where he admits that the democratic
party is entirely discountenanced, and that the Jacobin faction in
England is under a heavy cloud, was so possessed by the spectre of
panic, as to declare that the Duke of Brunswick was as much fighting
the battle of the crown of England, as the Duke of Cumberland fought
that battle at Culloden.

Time and events, meanwhile, had been powerfully telling for Burke.
While he was writing his _Appeal_, the French king and queen had
destroyed whatever confidence sanguine dreamers might have had in
their loyalty to the new order of things, by attempting to escape over
the frontier. They were brought back, and a manful attempt was made
to get the new constitution to work, in the winter of 1791-92. It was
soon found out that Mirabeau had been right when he said that for a
monarchy it was too democratic, and for a republic there was a king
too much. This was Burke's _Reflections_ in a nutshell. But it was
foreign intervention that finally ruined the king, and destroyed
the hope of an orderly issue. Frederick the Great had set the first
example of what some call iniquity and violence in Europe, and others
in milder terms call a readjustment of the equilibrium of nations. He
had taken Silesia from the house of Austria, and he had shared in
the first partition of Poland. Catherine II. had followed him at the
expense of Poland, Sweden, and Turkey. However we may view these
transactions, and whether we describe them by the stern words of the
moralist, or the more deprecatory words of the diplomatist, they are
the first sources of that storm of lawless rapine which swept
over every part of Europe for five and twenty years to come. The
intervention of Austria and Prussia in the affairs of France was
originally less a deliberate design for the benefit of the old order,
than an interlude in the intrigues of Eastern Europe. But the first
effect of intervention on behalf of the French monarchy was to bring
it in a few weeks to the ground.

In the spring of 1792 France replied to the preparations of Austria
and Prussia for invasion by a declaration of war. It was inevitable
that the French people should associate the court with the foreign
enemy that was coming to its deliverance. Everybody knew as well then
as we kno