that they want extremely. I heartily wish them some wit
in their anger, for it were great pity that so many millions should be
miserable for want of it."

This, it will he admitted, is very moderate and unapocalyptic.
Presently Monarchical Europe takes arms against the Revolution. But
there are two political observers at least who see that Monarchical
Europe is making a mistake--Kaunitz and Cowper. "The French," observes
Cowper to Lady Hesketh in December, 1792, "are a vain and childish
people, and conduct themselves on this grand occasion with a levity and
extravagance nearly akin to madness; but it would have been better for
Austria and Prussia to let them alone. All nations have a right to
choose their own form of government, and the sovereignty of the people
is a doctrine that evinces itself; for whenever the people choose to be
masters, they always are so, and none can hinder them. God grant that
we may have no revolution here, but unless we have reform, we certainly
shall. Depend upon it, my dear, the hour has come when power founded
on patronage and corrupt majorities must govern this land no longer.
Concessions, too, must he made to Dissenters of every denomination.
They have a right to them--a right to all the privileges of Englishmen,
and sooner or later, by fair means or by foul, they will have them."
Even in 1793, though he expresses, as he well might, a cordial
abhorrence of the doings of the French, he calls them not fiends, but
"madcaps." He expresses the strongest indignation against the Tory mob
which sacked Priestley's house at Birmingham, as he does, in justice be
it said, against all manifestations of fanaticism. We cannot help
sometimes wishing, as we read these passages in the letters, that
their calmness and reasonableness could have been communicated to
another "Old Whig," who was setting the world on fire with his
anti-revolutionary rhetoric.

It is true, as has already been said, that Cowper was "extramundane,"
and that his political reasonableness was in part the result of the
fancy that he and his fellow-saints had nothing to do with the world
but to keep themselves clear of it, and let it go its own way to
destruction. But it must also be admitted that while the wealth of
Establishments, of which Burke was the ardent defender, is necessarily
reactionary in the highest degree, the tendency of religion itself,
where it is genuine and sincere, must be to repress any selfish feeling