t it is a
lamentable fact that their admirers in England were now greatly on the
increase. On the very day that the festival of confederation took place
in Paris, six hundred gentlemen in England assembled to celebrate the
event which it commemorated. The chairman of this assembly was Earl
Stanhope, who acted as president of the Revolution Society in London: a
society which, after extending its ramifications throughout the country,
entered into an active correspondence not only with the National
Assembly, but with the societies in all parts of France, instituted for
the promotion of revolutionary principles. Among the associates of this
society were men of all ranks and professions--men who could lay no
claim to a practical acquaintance with politics, or the working of
governments, and who knew little or nothing of human nature. Happily
for the country, however. Burke and other writers put forth all their
strength to show the danger which lurked in the Revolution Societies
of England, and government opposed a mighty barrier to the progress of
their dangerous principles. These wrought the salvation of the country.
The most powerful antagonist to these societies, who worked by means of
the press, was Burke, who, toward the end of this year, published his
great work on the subject, entitled "Reflections on the Revolution, &c."
a work which sounded the knell of the old Whig confederacy. Some of
this party yielded at once to the force of his arguments, while others
retreated as they saw the development of the principles against which
they were directed. In fact, the result of this work was to make the
old appellations of Whig and Tory assume a widely different meaning from
that which had hitherto been attached to them: by the term Whig was now
understood the favourers of such democratic principles as existed in
France; by that of Tory, those who were alarmed at the progress of the
French revolution. The bold and uncompromising stand which Burke made
against these principles led to a final rupture between him and his old
friend Fox, and consequently to the permanent separation of the great
Whig party: from this time there was a division in the camp; a breach
which could not be healed.

WAR IN INDIA.

During this state of affairs in Europe, a war which directly concerned
England broke out in India. Tippoo Sultaun, whose hatred towards the
English was mortal, in the year 1789 sent a secret messenger to France,
to invite