lish plan. He was disappointed by their
extreme jealousy of anything which might look like dependence. The
functions of the viceroy rendered the question of restrictions of little
importance, and, under the guidance of Grattan, an address was voted
inviting the prince to assume the regency of the kingdom without
limitations. Buckingham refused to forward it on the ground that it
purported to invest the prince with a power not conferred on him by law;
for the prince could not lawfully take any part of the royal authority
without an act of parliament, and no Irish bill could be enacted without
the royal assent under the great seal. The cabinet approved of his
refusal. The parliament sent commissioners over with the address; but by
the time that it was presented the king was virtually recovered, and the
matter ended ineffectually. No serious consequences probably would in
any case have arisen from the course adopted by the Irish parliament,
but the difference between the two countries on so important a question
enforced the need of a legislative union. Soon after the conclusion of
this business Sydney resigned the home office. He differed from Pitt on
the slave trade question, and Pitt was probably glad to get a colleague
more thoroughly at one with him. He was succeeded by William Grenville
on June 5, and Henry Addington was elected speaker in Grenville's place.

[Sidenote: _THE FRENCH REVOLUTION BEGINS._]

In the summer news of a revolution arrived from Paris. The reforming
movement, in which all European states had some share, was promoted in
France by ideas of constitutional government borrowed from England, by
the attacks of Voltaire on medievalism and religious authority, by the
advance of science, by the teaching of the encyclopaedists, by the
exaltation of individual liberty by political economists, by Rousseau's
romantic theories on the foundations of society, and by sympathy with
the American revolution. It was supplied with practical aims by the
misery of the poor, the injustice done to the lower classes, which alone
paid the heaviest of the taxes, the privileges of the nobles and clergy,
the harshness of the laws, and arbitrary methods of government. England,
as we have seen, shared in the reforming movement. Here, however, it had
no such violent results as in France. No sharp lines divided class from
class; the laws were the same for all, there was no difference in
taxation, and no privileged caste, for a peer