e added: "Pitt seems
to have killed public opinion in England." A conversation which Sheridan
had with him on 7th December ought to have disproved this fable. The
Whig orator sternly reprobated the French decree of 19th November,
offering aid to malcontents, and stated that the Opposition desired
peace with France, but not if she attacked Holland. Nine-tenths of the
people would resent any attempt to interfere with England or her Allies.

This patriotic utterance of Sheridan expressed the feelings of a large
part of the Whig Opposition. Parliament on 13th December showed marked
approval of the King's Speech, which, while affirming his peaceful
intentions, asserted his resolve to strengthen the forces. Lansdowne and
Stanhope struck a few jarring notes; but in the Commons the Opposition
was almost paralysed by a split between the New and Old Whigs. At a
meeting of the party, held on 11th December at Burlington House, the
majority decided to support the Government. Indeed Parliament would
probably have presented a united front but for the action of Lansdowne,
Stanhope, and Fox. Much depended on the conduct of the great orator at
this crisis. A warning uttered by him to French Republicans might have
had the most salutary effect. Unfortunately his conduct was such as to
impair the unity of English sentiment and thereby to encourage the
delusions of the men in power at Paris. In the meeting on 11th December
he asserted that there was no fear of a revolt (in which he was
doubtless correct) and that the calling out of the Militia was a mere
trick, which he would strenuously oppose. He admitted that we must
support the Dutch if they were attacked, and disapproved of the French
decree respecting the Scheldt, but strongly deprecated war on that
account. On the 12th he threw caution to the winds, and stated with an
oath that there was no address that Pitt could frame on which he would
not propose an amendment and divide the House.[141] This is party spirit
run mad; but it was in that spirit that Fox went to the House on the
13th.

There he made one of his finest flights of oratory. None of his speeches
excels it in beauty of diction and matchless energy of thought. Most
forcible was the passage in which he derided the ministerial maxim that
the canon of English laws and liberties was complete; that we might
thenceforth stand still, and call upon a wondering world to admire it as
a model of human perfection. Even more biting were h