ould have remained passive. He
did not prosecute those which in November 1792 congratulated the French
Convention on the triumph of its arms in Belgium and the advent of a
Gallic millennium. What, then, were the developments which met with his
stern opposition?

But, firstly, we must ask the question, Why did not Pitt, in view of the
unswerving loyalty of the great majority of Britons, rely on the good
sense and weight of that mass to overbear the Jacobinical minority? It
is much to be regretted that he did not take that more intelligent and
more courageous course. But the events of the French Revolution seemed
to show the need of early taking decided measures against a resolute and
desperate group. At half a dozen crises in the years 1789-92 firm action
would have crushed the anarchic forces in Paris, Lyons, and Marseilles;
but, for lack of a strong guiding hand, those forces broke loose, with
results which all genuine friends of liberty have ever since deplored.
It is perfectly certain that, if Mirabeau had had a free hand, he would
have used coercive measures by the side of which those of Pitt's
so-called "Reign of Terror" would have been but as a pop-gun to a
cannon. Besides, to taunt Pitt with falseness to his principles of the
years 1782-5 is to ignore the patent facts that he advocated very
moderate changes in the representation. The Reform movement virtually
collapsed in 1785. That which now borrowed its watchwords was in the
main a Republican and levelling agency. The creed of the Radicals of
1793 was summed up, not in the academic programme of the Friends of the
People, the lineal heir to the earlier Associations, but in Part II of
Paine's "Rights of Man."

Here, surely, are the reasons for Pitt's repressive policy. He entered
on it regretfully, but he felt no sense of inconsistency in his change
of attitude towards Reform. The times had wholly changed; and that
movement changed with them. As Macaulay has well pointed out, Pitt never
declared that, under no circumstances, would he favour a moderate Reform
of Parliament. But he did declare that in his view Reform was at present
highly perilous; and he resolutely set himself to the task of coercing
those men and those agencies who advocated it in dangerous forms and by
lawless methods.

The first prosecution that need be noticed here was directed against
Paine for the seditious utterances in the "Rights of Man," particularly
in Part II. The Attorney-General m