ly of all national prosperity, by the principles they
established and the example they set in confiscating all the possessions
of the church. They had made and recorded a sort of institute and
digest of anarchy, called "A Declaration of the Rights of Man;" thus
systematically destroying every hold of authority by opinion, religious
or civil, on the minds of the people. By this mad declaration they
had subverted the state, and brought on such calamities as no country,
without a long war, had been known to suffer. Burke expressed himself
astonished and troubled at the movements in France beyond measure, and
denounced it as so far from being worthy of imitation, that it ought
to have our utter abhorrence He would spend the last drop of his
blood--would quit his best friends, and join his bitterest enemies, to
oppose the least influence of such a spirit in England. Burke concluded
his noble harangue by saying that he was now near the end of his
natural, and probably still nearer the end of his political, career;
that he was weak and weary, and wished for rest; that at his time of
life, if he could not do something by weight of opinion, it would be
useless to attempt anything by mere struggle; and that, with respect to
the British constitution, he wished but few alterations in it, adding,
that he should be happy if he left it not the worse for any share he
had taken in its service. This speech, so full of patriotism and
unanswerable argument, gave rise to a grand schism among the Whigs. As
soon as Burke had concluded, Fox rose and declared his total dissent
from opinions "so hostile to the general principles of liberty," and
which, he said, he was grieved to hear from the lips of a man whom he
loved and revered; a man by whose precepts he had been taught, and from
whom he had learned more than from all the men with whom he had ever
conversed. His speech on that day, he remarked, some arguments and
observations excepted, was among the wisest and most brilliant that had
ever been delivered in the house; but still, with all these admissions,
his opinion on the general subject remained unaltered. Fox entered into
a vindication of the conduct of the French army, in refusing to act
against their fellow-citizens, and excused the scenes of bloodshed and
cruelty which had been committed by the citizens, on the ground of their
long-suffering from tyranny. At the same time Fox declared, that he
never would lend himself to support any cab