s contest. Armies
were lost; the debt and taxes were increased; the hostile confederacy of
France, Spain and Holland was disquieting. As a result the war became
unpopular and Lord North's ministry fell. Dr. Johnson thought that no
nation not absolutely conquered had declined so much in so short a time.
"We seem to be sinking," he said. "I am afraid of a civil war." Dr.
Franklin, according to Horace Walpole, said "he would furnish Mr. Gibbon
with materials for writing the History of the Decline of the British
Empire." With his country tottering, the self-centered but truthful
Gibbon could not avoid mention of his personal loss, due to the fall of
his patron, Lord North. "I was stripped of a convenient salary," he
said, "after having enjoyed it about three years."[62]

The outbreak of the French Revolution intensified his conservatism. He
was then at Lausanne, the tranquillity of which was broken up by the
dissolution of the neighboring kingdom. Many Lausanne families were
terrified by the menace of bankruptcy. "This town and country," Gibbon
wrote, "are crowded with noble exiles, and we sometimes count in an
assembly a dozen princesses and duchesses."[63] Bitter disputes between
them and the triumphant Democrats disturbed the harmony of social
circles. Gibbon espoused the cause of the royalists. "I beg leave to
subscribe my assent to Mr. Burke's creed on the Revolution of France,"
he wrote. "I admire his eloquence, I approve his politics, I adore his
chivalry, and I can almost excuse his reverence for Church
establishments."[64] Thirteen days after the massacre of the Swiss guard
in the attack on the Tuileries in August, 1792, Gibbon wrote to Lord
Sheffield, "The last revolution of Paris appears to have convinced
almost everybody of the fatal consequences of Democratical principles
which lead by a path of flowers into the abyss of hell."[65] Gibbon, who
was astonished by so few things in history, wrote Sainte-Beuve, was
amazed by the French Revolution.[66] Nothing could be more natural. The
historian in his study may consider the fall of dynasties, social
upheavals, violent revolutions, and the destruction of order without a
tremor. The things have passed away. The events furnish food for his
reflections and subjects for his pen, while sanguine uprisings at home
or in a neighboring country in his own time inspire him with terror lest
the oft-prophesied dissolution of society is at hand. It is the
difference between the e