f Europe offer a striking
contrast to the repose of England. While the wise and steadfast policy
of Mr. Pitt had secured to this country the blessings of peace, now
rapidly expanding into a condition of almost unexampled prosperity,
France was undergoing the throes of that desolating Revolution which
brought the Sovereign to the scaffold, and laid the train of those
disasters which finally expelled the Bourbons from the throne. There are
few traces of those disturbing circumstances in the correspondence of
Lord Buckingham and his brother, which, in consequence of the frequent
opportunities they now enjoyed of personal intercourse, had become
scanty, and, so far as public affairs were concerned, unimportant.
Slight scraps of intelligence, the last rumour from abroad, or matters
of purely personal or domestic interest, form the staple of the letters
that passed between them at this period.

It was in this year that Edmund Burke, to the infinite surprise of his
old allies, published his famous pamphlet on the French Revolution. The
impression it made in England may be accepted as an evidence of the
soundness of the national judgment, and the devotion of the people to
the established institutions of the country. This healthy condition of
the public mind was attributable, in a greater degree than we can
venture now to estimate, to the spirit of patriotism and union awakened
in the kingdom by the firm Administration of Mr. Pitt and his friends.
They had restored the general confidence in the justice and stability of
the Government, which the weakness and divided councils of former
Cabinets had dissipated; they had struck the happy mean between the
prerogatives of the Crown and the encroachments of the Legislature; and,
above all, in the recent conflicts on the Regency question, they had
successfully asserted the doctrine, that the rights of the Sovereign and
the rights of the people were founded on a common basis; and, by showing
that their interests were identical, they had reconciled those extreme
elements in the Constitution which a powerful party had laboured, with
great eloquence and considerable effect, to separate on the grounds of a
natural antagonism. Their popularity was unbounded, and saved the
country. Paine's "Age of Reason" fell innocuous upon the people; the
tidings of the Revolution, and of the massacres that tracked its daily
steps in blood, excited wonder and horror, but produced no frenzy of
imitation such