overnment. The
subject was resumed in the debates which took place on the 5th and 9th
of February, in both of which Fox spoke in a laudatory manner of the
French military, and in the latter of which he extended his eulogiums
to the French revolution itself. It has been seen before that Burke's
sentiments on this subject were foreign to those of his party, and
notwithstanding his political connection _with_, and friendship
_for_ Fox, he rose from his seat greatly agitated, and denounced the
revolution as "an irrational, unprincipled, proscribing, confiscating,
plundering, ferocious, bloody, tyrannical democracy." In his speech,
Burke, after paying some high compliments to the genius and character
of Fox, and adverting to the danger of his opinions as sanctioned by
the authority of so great a name, entered at large into the subject. He
remarked:--"The French have shown themselves the ablest architects of
ruin that have hitherto appeared in the world. In one short summer
they have completely pulled down their monarchy, their church, their
nobility, their law, their army, and their revenue. Were we absolute
conquerors, with France prostrate at our feet, we should blush to impose
on them terms so destructive to their national consequence, as the
durance they have imposed on themselves. Our present clanger is that of
being led, from admiration, to imitate the excesses of a people whose
government is anarchy, and whose religion is atheism." Burke expressed
his concern at hearing this strange thing called a revolution in France,
compared with the glorious event called the revolution in England.
He instituted a parallel between the two, and showed how widely they
differed from each other, and how Great Britain had risen beyond the
standard of her former self, because she had commenced with reparation,
and not with ruin. The French, he said, had made their way through
the destruction of their country to a bad constitution, when they were
absolutely in possession of a good one. Instead of redressing grievances
and improving the fabric of their state, to which they were called by
their monarch and sent by their country, they had first destroyed all
the balances and counterpoises which served to fix the state and to
give it a steady direction, melting down the whole into one incongruous,
ill-connected mass; and then, with the most atrocious perfidy and
breach of all faith, they laid the axe to the root of all property,
and consequent