of men, we must judge worse of opportunities, which continually vary their shapes and colours, and pass away like clouds.”  Our admiration at such words is quickly stifled when we recall the confident, unsparing, immoderate criticism which both preceded and followed this truly rational exposition of the danger of advising, in cases where we know neither the men nor the opportunities.  Why was savage and unfaltering denunciation any less unbecoming than, as he admits, crude prescriptions would have been unbecoming?

By the end of 1791, when he wrote the Thoughts on French Affairs, he had penetrated still farther into the essential character of the Revolution.  Any notion of a reform to be effected after the decorous pattern of 1688, so conspicuous in the first great manifesto, had wholly disappeared.  The changes in France he allowed to bear little resemblance or analogy to any of those which had been previously brought about in Europe.  It is a revolution, he said, of doctrine and theoretic dogma.  The Reformation was the last revolution of this sort which had happened in Europe; and he immediately goes on to remark a point of striking resemblance between them.  The effect of the Reformation was “to introduce other interests into all countries than those which arose from their locality and natural circumstances.”  In like manner other sources of faction were now opened, combining parties among the inhabitants of different countries into a single connection.  From these sources, effects were likely to arise fully as important as those which had formerly arisen from the jarring interests of the religious sects.  It is a species of faction which “breaks the locality of public affections."[1]

[Footnote 1:  De Tocqueville has unconsciously imitated Burke’s very phrases.  “Toutes les revolutions civiles et politiques ont eu une patrie, et s’y sont enfermees.  La Revolution. francaise ... on l’a vue rapprocher ou diviser les hommes en depit des lois, des traditions, des caracteres, de langue, rendant parfois ennemis des compatriotes, et freres des etrangers; ou plutot elle a forme audessus de toutes les nationalites particulieres, une patrie intellectuelle commune dont les hommes de toutes les nations ont pu devenir citoyens.”—­Ancien Regime, p. 15.]

He was thus launched on the full tide of his policy.  The French Revolution must be hemmed in by a cordon of fire.  Those who sympathised with it in England must be gagged, and if gagging did not suffice, they must be taught respect for the constitution in dungeons and on the gallows.  His cry for war abroad and harsh coercion at home waxed louder every day.  As Fox said, it was lucky that Burke took the royal side in the Revolution, for his violence would certainly have got him hanged if he had happened to take the other side.