nor of Francis, nor of many others of his party, and difference of opinion
here was naturally followed by difference of opinion upon affairs in
France. Fox, Grey, Windham, Sheridan, Francis, Lord Fitzwilliam, and most
of the other Whig leaders, welcomed the Revolution in France. And so did
Pitt, too, for some time. "How much the greatest event it is that ever
happened in the world," cried Fox, with the exaggeration of a man ready to
dance the carmagnole, "and how much the best!" The dissension between a man
who felt so passionately as Burke, and a man who spoke so impulsively as
Charles Fox, lay in the very nature of things. Between Sheridan and Burke
there was an open breach in the House of Commons upon the Revolution so
early as February 1790, and Sheridan's influence with Fox was strong. This
divergence of opinion destroyed all the elation that Burke might well have
felt at his compliments from kings, his gold medals, his twelve editions.
But he was too fiercely in earnest in his horror of Jacobinism to allow
mere party associations to guide him. In May 1791 the thundercloud burst,
and a public rupture between Burke and Fox took place in the House of
Commons.

The scene is famous in English parliamentary annals. The minister had
introduced a measure for the division of the province of Canada and for the
establishment of a local legislature in each division. Fox in the course of
debate went out of his way to laud the Revolution, and to sneer at some of
the most effective passages in the _Reflections_. Burke was not present,
but he announced his determination to reply. On the day when the Quebec
Bill was to come on again, Fox called upon Burke, and the pair walked
together from Burke's house in Duke Street down to Westminster. The Quebec
Bill was recommitted, and Burke at once rose and soon began to talk his
usual language against the Revolution, the rights of man, and Jacobinism
whether English or French. There was a call to order. Fox, who was as sharp
and intolerant in the House as he was amiable out of it, interposed with
some words of contemptuous irony. Pitt, Grey, Lord Sheffield, all plunged
into confused and angry debate as to whether the French Revolution was a
good thing, and whether the French Revolution, good or bad, had anything to
do with the Quebec Bill. At length Fox, in seconding a motion for confining
the debate to its proper subject, burst into the fatal question beyond the
subject, taxing Burke with