as then sent down to the
commons. It was there treated by Fox and his party as a measure
contrary to the existing treaties between Great Britain and France; as
a violation of the law of nations; and as an outrage on Magna Charta.
Burke supported the measure as strenuously as Fox opposed it. Having
commented in severe terms on the exultation which Fox had manifested on
the success of the French, he then expatiated on the nature of French
fraternization, and of that liberty which the revolutionists were so
anxious to propagate throughout Europe, and which he denounced as a
liberty without property, morals, order, government, and security. The
apostles of liberty in France, he said, had destroyed the Bastille,
while they had converted every man's house in Paris into such a prison.
He quoted the speech of M. Dupont in the convention, to show that
Atheism was the first-fruits of French liberty: that fierce demagogue
had declared that the religion of Jesus Christ was unfit to be tolerated
in a republic, because it was a monarchical religion, and preached
subjection and obedience to God; a declaration which was received by the
convention with shouts of impious applause. Burke feelingly deplored the
natural effects of a profligacy, which went to deprive man of happiness
in life, and consolation in the hour of death. On the subject of the
Alien Bill, Burke remarked, that he thought it calculated to save the
country, for although the number of suspicious aliens might be small, it
should be remembered that the horrid massacres in Paris in the preceding
autumn had been perpetrated by a body of men not exceeding two hundred.
Burke alluded to the fact that three thousand daggers had been ordered
and manufactured in Birmingham, and it was on this occasion that he had
recourse to a stroke of oratorical acting which has been often commented
upon. Drawing a concealed dagger from his bosom, and throwing it down
upon the floor of the house, he exclaimed:--"This is what you are to
gain by an alliance with the French! Wherever their principles are
introduced, their practice must follow. You must equally proscribe their
tenets and their persons! You must keep their principles from our minds,
and their daggers from our hearts." The debates on the bill were renewed
in its different stages: on the third reading Fox endeavoured to prove
that the anxiety about a few French aliens in England was ridiculous;
that no Alien Act could guard against the i