the world. I cannot persuade myself that
any examples or any reasonings drawn from other wars and other politics are
at all applicable to it" (_Corr._ iv. 219). Pitt, on the other hand, as
Lord Russell truly says, treated Robespierre and Carnot as he would have
treated any other French rulers, whose ambition was to be resisted, and
whose interference in the affairs of other nations was to be checked. And
he entered upon the matter [v.04 p.0834] in the spirit of a man of
business, by sending ships to seize some islands belonging to France in the
West Indies, so as to make certain of repayment of the expenses of the war.

In the summer of 1794 Burke was struck to the ground by a blow to his
deepest affection in life, and he never recovered from it. His whole soul
was wrapped up in his only son, of whose abilities he had the most
extravagant estimate and hope. All the evidence goes to show that Richard
Burke was one of the most presumptuous and empty-headed of human beings.
"He is the most impudent and opiniative fellow I ever knew," said Wolfe
Tone. Gilbert Elliot, a very different man, gives the same account.
"Burke," he says, describing a dinner party at Lord Fitzwilliam's in 1793,
"has now got such a train after him as would sink anybody but himself: his
son, who is quite _nauseated_ by all mankind; his brother, who is liked
better than his son, but is rather oppressive with animal spirits and
brogue; and his cousin, William Burke, who is just returned unexpectedly
from India, as much ruined as when he went years ago, and who is a fresh
charge on any prospects of power Burke may ever have. Mrs Burke has in her
train Miss French [Burke's niece], the most perfect _She Paddy_ that ever
was caught. Notwithstanding these disadvantages Burke is in himself a sort
of power in the state. It is not too much to say that he is a sort of power
in Europe, though totally without any of those means or the smallest share
in them which give or maintain power in other men." Burke accepted the
position of a power in Europe seriously. Though no man was ever more free
from anything like the egoism of the intellectual coxcomb, yet he abounded
in that active self-confidence and self-assertion which is natural in men
who are conscious of great powers, and strenuous in promoting great causes.
In the summer of 1791 he despatched his son to Coblenz to give advice to
the royalist exiles, then under the direction of Calonne, and to report to
him at B