While the affair of the Russian armament was still occupying the minister, an event of signal importance happened in the ranks of his political adversaries.  The alliance which had lasted between Burke and Fox for five and twenty years came to a sudden end, and this rift gradually widened into a destructive breach throughout the party.  There is no parallel in our parliamentary history to the fatal scene.  In Ireland, indeed, only eight years before, Flood and Grattan, after fighting side by side for many years, had all at once sprung upon one another in the Parliament House with the fury of vultures:  Flood had screamed to Grattan that he was a mendicant patriot, and Grattan had called Flood an ill-omened bird of night, with a sepulchral note, a cadaverous aspect, and a broken beak.  The Irish, like the French, have the art of making things dramatic, and Burke was the greatest of Irishmen.  On the opening of the session of 1791, the Government had introduced a bill for the better government of Canada.  It introduced questions about church establishments and hereditary legislators.  In discussing these Fox made some references to France.  It was impossible to refer to France without touching the Reflections on the French Revolution.  Burke was not present, but he heard what Fox had said, and before long Fox again introduced French affairs in a debate on the Russian armament.  Burke rose in violent heat of mind to reply, but the House would not hear him.  He resolved to speak when the time came for the Canada Bill to be recommitted.  Meanwhile some of his friends did all that they could to dissuade him from pressing the matter farther.  Even the Prince of Wales is said to have written him a letter.  There were many signs of the rupture that was so soon to come in the Whig ranks.  Men so equally devoted to the common cause as Windham and Elliot nearly came to a quarrel at a dinner-party at Lord Malmesbury’s, on the subject of Burke’s design to speak; and Windham, who for the present sided with Fox, enters in his diary that he was glad to escape from the room without speaking to the man whom, since the death of Dr. Johnson, he revered before all other men besides.

On the day apointed for the Canada Bill, Fox called at Burke’s house, and after some talk on Burke’s intention to speak, and on other matters, they walked down to Westminster and entered the House together, as they had so many a time done before, but were never to do again.  They found that the debate had been adjourned, and it was not until May 6th that Burke had an opportunity of explaining himself on the Revolution in France.  He had no sooner risen than interruptions broke out from his own side, and a scene of great disorder followed.  Burke was incensed beyond endurance by this treatment, for even Fox and Windham had taken part in the tumult against him.  With much bitterness he commented on Fox’s previous eulogies of the Revolution, and finally there came the fatal words