t on the side of justice, humanity and
order in dealing with the revolution which had brought to England new
empire in the East. The same vehement passion for freedom, justice,
humanity and order was roused in him at a very early stage of the third
great revolution in his history--the revolution which overthrew the old
monarchy in France. From the first Burke looked on the events of 1789 with
doubt and misgiving. He had been in France in 1773, where he had not only
the famous vision of Marie Antoinette at Versailles, "glittering like the
morning star, full of life, and splendour and joy," but had also supped and
discussed with some of the destroyers, the encyclopaedists, "the
sophisters, economists and calculators." His first speech on his return to
England was a warning (March 17, 1773) that the props of good government
were beginning to fail under the systematic attacks of unbelievers, and
that principles were being propagated that would not leave to civil society
any stability. The apprehension never died out in his mind; and when he
knew that the principles and abstractions, the un-English dialect and
destructive dialectic, of his former acquaintances were predominant in the
National Assembly, his suspicion that the movement would end in disastrous
miscarriage waxed into certainty.

The scene grew still more sinister in his eyes after the march of the mob
from Paris to Versailles in October, and the violent transport of the king
and queen from Versailles to Paris. The same hatred of lawlessness and
violence which fired him with a divine rage against the Indian malefactors
was aroused by the violence and lawlessness of the Parisian insurgents. The
same disgust for abstractions and naked doctrines of right that had stirred
him against the pretensions of the British parliament in 1774 and 1776, was
revived in as lively a degree by political conceptions which he judged to
be identical in the French assembly of 1789. And this anger and disgust
were exasperated by the dread with which certain proceedings in England had
inspired him, that the aims, principles, methods and language which he so
misdoubted or abhorred in France were likely to infect the people of Great
Britain.

In November 1790 the town, which had long been eagerly expecting a
manifesto from Burke's pen, was electrified by the _Reflections on the
Revolution in France, and on the proceedings in certain societies in London
relative to that event_. The generous