etherlands on the understanding that France would not conquer
them for herself; could the government be persuaded to an alliance by
offers of Tobago, a mutual guarantee of possessions, and a treaty of
commerce; and could a loan be arranged? Negotiation on these points was
entrusted to Talleyrand who was to accompany Chauvelin, the accredited
ambassador, to England.[232] On April 20 France declared war on the
"King of Hungary and Bohemia," as Francis was entitled before his
election.

[Sidenote: _SEDITIOUS PUBLICATIONS._]

While England's official relations with France remained friendly,
dislike of the revolution was growing stronger, and the more moderate
whigs were changing their opinions with regard to it. This change was
largely due to the active propagation of revolutionary ideas among the
lower classes, which was carried on by various societies. The Friends of
the People, a respectable association of the more extreme whigs,
excluding Fox, who would not join it, was formed in the spring of 1792
to promote parliamentary reform; some of its proceedings were
discreditable, but it kept clear of connexion with the French
revolutionists. Not so the Revolution Society, the Society for
Constitutional Information, and the London Correspondence Society, which
were in correspondence with the jacobins of Paris. The last, the most
formidable of them, was directed by a secret council, and had branches
in various large towns, the Sheffield branch alone numbering 2,400
members. Meetings were held in which the most violent revolutionary
sentiments were loudly applauded, and seditious handbills and pamphlets,
chief among them the second part of Paine's _Rights of Man_, were
distributed by tens of thousands. Though the number of persons who
adopted revolutionary ideas was as yet comparatively small, the
propaganda was carried on noisily, and was certainly gaining ground. The
government saw that it was time to interfere, and, on May 21, issued a
royal proclamation against seditious writings. The address to the crown
in answer to the proclamation was opposed in the commons by Grey. Fox
supported him, and declared that the proclamation was merely a move
taken by the government to divide the "whig interest," which, he said,
nothing could divide. Nevertheless Windham and others of Fox's party
supported the government, and the address was carried without a
division. Proceedings were taken against Paine by the attorney-general;
he fled to