ide the lines of party.
The improvement of prisons was not a party question. A marked
change--not always, I think, sufficiently emphasised by historians--had
followed the second war. The party-divisions began to take the form
which was to become more marked as time went on. The old issues between
Jacobin and Anti-Jacobin no longer existed. Napoleon had become the heir
of the revolution. The great struggle was beginning in which England
commanded the ocean, while the Continent was at the feet of the empire.
For a time the question was whether England, too, should be invaded.
After Trafalgar invasion became hopeless. The Napoleonic victories
threatened to exclude English trade from the Continent: while England
retorted by declaring that the Continent should trade with nobody else.
Upon one side the war was now appealing to higher feelings. It was no
longer a crusade against theories, but a struggle for national existence
and for the existence of other nations threatened by a gigantic
despotism. Men like Wordsworth and Coleridge, who could not be
Anti-Jacobins, had been first shocked by the Jacobin treatment of
Switzerland, and now threw themselves enthusiastically into the cause
which meant the rescue of Spain and Germany from foreign oppression. The
generous feeling which had resented the attempt to forbid Frenchmen to
break their own bonds, now resented the attempts of Frenchmen to impose
bonds upon others. The patriotism which prompted to a crusade had seemed
unworthy, but the patriotism which was now allied with the patriotism of
Spain and Germany involved no sacrifice of other sentiment. Many men had
sympathised with the early revolution, not so much from any strong
sentiment of evils at home as from a belief that the French movement was
but a fuller development of the very principles which were partially
embodied in the British Constitution. They had no longer to choose
between sympathising with the enemies of England and sympathising with
the suppressors of the old English liberties.

But, on the other hand, an opposite change took place. The
disappearance of the Jacobin movement allowed the Radicalism of home
growth to display itself more fully. English Whigs of all shades had
opposed the war with certain misgivings. They had been nervously anxious
not to identify themselves with the sentiments of the Jacobins. They
desired peace with the French, but had to protest that it was not for
love of French principles. Th