Men soon began to whisper abroad that Burke thought ill of what was going on over the water.  When it transpired that he was writing a pamphlet, the world of letters was stirred with the liveliest expectation.  The name of the author, the importance of the subject, and the singularity of his opinions, so Mackintosh informs us, all inflamed the public curiosity.  Soon after Parliament met for the session (1790), the army estimates were brought up.  Fox criticised the increase of our forces, and incidentally hinted something in praise of the French army, which had shown that a man could be a soldier without ceasing to be a citizen.  Some days afterwards the subject was revived, and Pitt, as well as Fox, avowed himself hopeful of the good effect of the Revolution upon the order and government of France.  Burke followed in a very different vein, openly proclaiming that dislike and fear of the Revolution which was to be the one ceaseless refrain of all that he spoke or wrote for the rest of his life.  He deplored Fox’s praise of the army for breaking their lawful allegiance, and then he proceeded with ominous words to the effect that, if any friend of his should concur in any measures which should tend to introduce such a democracy as that of France, he would abandon his best friends and join with his worst enemies to oppose either the means or the end.  This has unanimously been pronounced one of the most brilliant and effective speeches that Burke ever made.  Fox rose with distress on every feature, and made the often-quoted declaration of his debt to Burke:—­“If all the political information I have learned from books, all which I have gained from science, and all which my knowledge of the world and its affairs has taught me, were put into one scale, and the improvement which I have derived from my right honourable friend’s instruction and conversation were placed in the other, I should be at a loss to decide to which to give the preference.  I have learnt more from my right honourable friend than from all the men with whom I ever conversed.”  All seemed likely to end in a spirit of conciliation until Sheridan rose, and in the plainest terms that he could find, expressed his dissent from everything that Burke had said.  Burke immediately renounced his friendship.  For the first time in his life he found the sympathy of the House vehemently on his side.

In the following month (March 1790) this unpromising incident was succeeded by an aberration which no rational man will now undertake to defend.  Fox brought forward a motion for the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts.  He did this in accordance with a recent suggestion of Burke’s own, that he should strengthen his political position by winning the support of the Dissenters.  Burke himself had always denounced the Test Act as bad, and as an abuse of sacred things.  To the amazement of everybody, and to the infinite scandal of his party, he now pronounced the Dissenters to be disaffected citizens, and refused to relieve them.  Well might Fox say that Burke’s words had filled him with grief and shame.