large number of the same
pattern: and Burke had received it only on that day--and received it
from Sir James Bland Burgess only on his way down to the house--so that
there could have been no preparation for public exhibition. It was a
natural impulse of the moment, in a time when all was emotion.

The murder of the unfortunate King of France, on the 21st of January
1793, perhaps the most wanton murder in all royal history, instantly
brought out a full display of the _real_ feelings of England. The
universal sentiment was horror, mingled with indignation; and when the
royal message came down to the house on the 28th, stating that, in
consequence of the regicide, the king had ordered M. Chauvelin, minister
from the late king, to leave the country, as being no longer accredited
by the sovereign, the message seemed rather the echo of the national
voice than the dictate of the government.

From this period the Whig party diminished day by day. They were chiefly
the great landholders of the kingdom, and they saw in this atrocious act
a declaration against all property; but they had also the higher motive
of its being a declaration against all government. The chief persons of
the Opposition at once crossed the house; but as Horne Tooke, in his apt
and short style, described the party on his trial, "We all," said he,
"entered the revolutionary coach at Reading; but one got out at
Maidenhead, another at Slough, a third at Hounslow, and a fourth at
Brentford. It was _my_ misfortune, my lord, as it was also Mr Fox's, to
go on to London."

The French now threw off all political form, and all diplomatic decorum,
and exhibited the whole savagism of republicanism. On the motion of a
ruffian of the name of Garnier, the Convention publicly resolved that
"Pitt was an enemy to the human race." The same ruffian then proceeded
to move, "that every body had a right to assassinate him." This,
however, was _not_ carried; but an order was sent, on the proposal of
Robespierre, to the armies, that "no quarter should be given to the
English troops;" an order which was not repealed until his death by the
guillotine.

Those were stirring times, and in every instance of success in the
campaign, Pitt sent an immediate courier to Addington when out of town,
of which the Speaker gave the signal to the surrounding country by
lighting up his house. On one occasion of this kind, a friend of his,
travelling on the coach from Bath, heard the coachman say