45.  It is also not to be forgotten, that Mr. Fox, and all who hold with him, on this, as on all other occasions of pretended reform, most bitterly reproach Mr. Pitt with treachery, in declining to support the scandalous charges and indefinite projects of this infamous libel from the Friends of the People.  By the animosity with which they persecute all those who grow cold in this cause of pretended reform, they hope, that, if, through levity, inexperience, or ambition, any young person (like Mr. Pitt, for instance) happens to be once embarked in their design, they shall by a false shame keep him fast in it forever.  Many they have so hampered.

46.  I know it is usual, when the peril and alarm of the hour appears to be a little overblown, to think no more of the matter.  But, for my part, I look back with horror on what we have escaped, and am full of anxiety with regard to the dangers which in my opinion are still to be apprehended both at home and abroad.  This business has cast deep roots.  Whether it is necessarily connected in theory with Jacobinism is not worth a dispute.  The two things are connected in fact.  The partisans of the one are the partisans of the other.  I know it is common with those who are favorable to the gentlemen of Mr. Fox’s party and to their leader, though not at all devoted to all their reforming projects or their Gallican politics, to argue, in palliation of their conduct, that it is not in their power to do all the harm which their actions evidently tend to.  It is said, that, as the people will not support them, they may safely be indulged in those eccentric fancies of reform, and those theories which lead to nothing.  This apology is not very much to the honor of those politicians whose interests are to be adhered to in defiance of their conduct.  I cannot flatter myself that these incessant attacks on the constitution of Parliament are safe.  It is not in my power to despise the unceasing efforts of a confederacy of about fifty persons of eminence:  men, for the far greater part, of very ample fortunes either in possession or in expectancy; men of decided characters and vehement passions; men of very great talents of all kinds, of much boldness, and of the greatest possible spirit of artifice, intrigue, adventure, and enterprise, all operating with unwearied activity and perseverance.  These gentlemen are much stronger, too, without doors than some calculate.  They have the more active part of the Dissenters with them, and the whole clan of speculators of all denominations,—­a large and growing species.  They have that floating multitude which goes with events, and which suffers the loss or gain of a battle to decide its opinions of right and wrong.  As long as by every art this party keeps alive a spirit of disaffection against the very Constitution of the kingdom, and attributes, as lately it has been in the habit of doing, all the public misfortunes to that Constitution, it is absolutely impossible but that some moment must arrive