transactions in France, I
do assure you that I was not moved so much by a difference of opinion
on the subject, as by an apprehension of the personal uneasiness
which, one way or other, I thought you would suffer by it. I know that
virtue would be useless, if it were not active, and that it can rarely
be active without exciting the most malignant of all enmity, that in
which envy predominates, and which, having no injury to complain of,
has no ostensible motive either to resent or to forgive." (How like
Junius is all this! The likeness is still stronger as it proceeds.) "I
have not yet had it in my power to read more than one third of your
book. I must taste it deliberately. The flavour is too high--the wine
is too rich; I cannot take a draught of it." In another passage he
gives a powerful sketch of popery. In speaking of the French monarchy,
and its presumed mildness in the last century, he attributes the
cessation of its severities to the European change of manners. "We do
not pillage and massacre quite so furiously as our ancestors used to
do. Why? Because these nations are more enlightened--because the
Christian religion is, _de facto_, not in force in the world! Suspect
me not of meaning the Christian religion of the _gospel_. I mean that
which was enforced, rather than taught, by priests, by bishops, and by
cardinals; which laid waste a province, and then formed a monastery;
which, after destroying a great portion of the human species,
provided, as far as it could, for the utter extinction of future
population, by instituting numberless retreats for celibacy; which set
up an ideal being called the Church, capable of possessing property of
all sorts for the pious use of its ministers, incapable of alienating,
and whose property its usufructuaries very wisely said it should be
sacrilege to invade; that religion, in short, which was practised, or
professed, and with great zeal too, by tyrants and villains of every
denomination."

These volumes show, in a strong light, the energy with which Burke
watched over his party in the House of Commons, and the importance of
his guardianship. He seems to have been called on for his advice in
all great transactions, and to have watched over its interests during
the period of Fox's absence. In 1788 the mental illness of George III.
became decided, and the prospect of a regency with the Prince of Wales
at its head, awoke all the long excluded ambition of the Whigs. Fox
was at t