of the preceding instances. For, unless the Parliament interfered to
create an authority, there was absolutely none in existence which was
capable of acting. It should also be remembered that this Parliament of
1789, though not opened for the session by the King, had been originally
elected in obedience to his order, and had been prorogued by his
proclamation to the day of meeting;[123] and, though the opening of a
session by a speech from the throne is the usual form for the
commencement of its proceedings, it may be doubted whether it be so
indispensable a part of them that none of their acts are valid without
it.

The breaking out of the French Revolution, and the degree in which, in
spite of all its atrocities and horrors, the revolutionary spirit for a
time infected a large party in England, prevented Pitt from reviving the
plan of Reform which he had framed with such care and genius for
organization, and in which, though defeated in Parliament, both before
and after he became minister, he had hitherto continued to cherish the
hope of eventually succeeding. But when clubs and societies, where the
most revolutionary and seditious doctrines were openly broached, were
springing up in London and other large towns, and unscrupulous
demagogues by speeches and pamphlets were busily disseminating theories
which tended to the subversion of all legitimate authority, he not
unnaturally thought it no longer seasonable to invite a discussion of
schemes which would be supported in many quarters only, to quote his own
words, "as a stepping-stone to ulterior objects, which they dared not
avow till their power of carrying them into effect should be by this
first acquisition secured." But the alarm which the spread of
revolutionary ideas excited in his mind was displayed, not only
passively in this abstention from the advocacy of measures the
expediency of which must at all times in some degree depend on the tone
of their introduction, but also in active measures of repression, some
of which were not, indeed, unwarranted by precedent, but others of which
can hardly be denied to have been serious inroads on the constitution,
infringements of the freedom of opinion and discussion to which all
Englishmen are entitled, and one of which was, to say the least, a very
perilous extension of a law already sufficiently severe, the statute of
treason. If the French had been content with the overthrow of their own
government and institutions,