most dreadful and the most shameful evil which ever afflicted mankind, a
thing which goes beyond the power of all calculation in its
mischief,--and that, if it is suffered to exist in France, we must in
England, and speedily too, fall into that calamity.

54. I figure to myself the purpose of these gentlemen accomplished, and
this ministry destroyed. I see that the persons who in that case must
rule can be no other than Mr. Fox, Mr. Sheridan, Mr. Grey, the Marquis
of Lansdowne, Lord Thurlow, Lord Lauderdale, and the Duke of Norfolk,
with the other chiefs of the Friends of the People, the Parliamentary
reformers, and the admirers of the French Revolution. The principal of
these are all formally pledged to their projects. If the Duke of
Portland and Lord Fitzwilliam should be admitted into that system, (as
they might and probably would be,) it is quite certain they could not
have the smallest weight in it,--less, indeed, than what they now
possess, if less were possible: because they would be less wanted than
they now are; and because all those who wished to join them, and to act
under them, have been rejected by the Duke of Portland and Lord
Fitzwilliam themselves; and Mr. Fox, finding them thus by themselves
disarmed, has built quite a new fabric, upon quite a new foundation.
There is no trifling on this subject. We see very distinctly before us
the ministry that would be formed and the plan that would be pursued. If
we like the plan, we must wish the power of those who are to carry it
into execution; but to pursue the political exaltation of those whose
political measures we disapprove and whose principles we dissent from is
a species of modern politics not easily comprehensible, and which must
end in the ruin of the country, if it should continue and spread. Mr.
Pitt may be the worst of men, and Mr. Fox may be the best; but, at
present, the former is in the interest of his country, and of the order
of things long established in Europe: Mr. Fox is not. I have, for one,
been born in this order of things, and would fain die in it. I am sure
it is sufficient to make men as virtuous, as happy, and as knowing as
anything which Mr. Fox, and his friends abroad or at, home, would
substitute in its place; and I should be sorry that any set of
politicians should obtain power in England whose principles or schemes
should lead them to countenance persons or factions whose object is to
introduce some new devised order of things into