Also, as we said, the Pamphleteer draws pen, on this side and that:  zealous fists beat the Pulpit-drum.  Not without issue!  Did not iron Birmingham, shouting ‘Church and King,’ itself knew not why, burst out, last July, into rage, drunkenness, and fire; and your Priestleys, and the like, dining there on that Bastille day, get the maddest singeing:  scandalous to consider!  In which same days, as we can remark, high Potentates, Austrian and Prussian, with Emigrants, were faring towards Pilnitz in Saxony; there, on the 27th of August, they, keeping to themselves what further ‘secret Treaty’ there might or might not be, did publish their hopes and their threatenings, their Declaration that it was ‘the common cause of Kings.’

Where a will to quarrel is, there is a way.  Our readers remember that Pentecost-Night, Fourth of August 1789, when Feudalism fell in a few hours?  The National Assembly, in abolishing Feudalism, promised that ‘compensation’ should be given; and did endeavour to give it.  Nevertheless the Austrian Kaiser answers that his German Princes, for their part, cannot be unfeudalised; that they have Possessions in French Alsace, and Feudal Rights secured to them, for which no conceivable compensation will suffice.  So this of the Possessioned Princes, ’Princes Possessiones’ is bandied from Court to Court; covers acres of diplomatic paper at this day:  a weariness to the world.  Kaunitz argues from Vienna; Delessart responds from Paris, though perhaps not sharply enough.  The Kaiser and his Possessioned Princes will too evidently come and take compensation—­so much as they can get.  Nay might one not partition France, as we have done Poland, and are doing; and so pacify it with a vengeance?

From South to North!  For actually it is ‘the common cause of Kings.’  Swedish Gustav, sworn Knight of the Queen of France, will lead Coalised Armies;—­had not Ankarstrom treasonously shot him; for, indeed, there were griefs nearer home. (30th March 1792 Annual Register, p. 11).  Austria and Prussia speak at Pilnitz; all men intensely listening:  Imperial Rescripts have gone out from Turin; there will be secret Convention at Vienna.  Catherine of Russia beckons approvingly; will help, were she ready.  Spanish Bourbon stirs amid his pillows; from him too, even from him, shall there come help.  Lean Pitt, ’the Minister of Preparatives,’ looks out from his watch-tower in Saint-James’s, in a suspicious manner.  Councillors plotting, Calonnes dim-hovering;—­alas, Serjeants rub-a-dubbing openly through all manner of German market-towns, collecting ragged valour! (Toulongeon, ii. 100-117.) Look where you will, immeasurable Obscurantism is girdling this fair France; which, again, will not be girdled by it.  Europe is in travail; pang after pang; what a shriek was that of Pilnitz!  The birth will be:  War.