The English drama had the whole world for audience.  The great actors for the moment were Pitt, the controller of these storms, the intrepid organ of the throne, of order, and the laws of his country; Fox, the precursory tribune of the French Revolution, who propagated the doctrines by connecting them with the revolutions of England, in order to sanctify them in the eyes of the English; Burke, the philosophical orator, every one of whose orations was a treatise; then the Cicero of the opposition party, and who was so speedily to turn against the excesses of the French Revolution, and curse the new faith in the first victim immolated by the people; and lastly, Sheridan, an eloquent debauchee, liked by the populace for his levity and his vices, seducing his country, instead of elevating it.  The warmth of the debates on the American war, and the Indian war, gave a more powerful interest to the storms of the English parliament.

The independence of America, effected by a newly-born people, the republican maxims on which this new continent founded its government, the reputation attached to the fresh names, which distance increased more than their victories,—­Washington, Franklin, La Fayette, the heroes of public imagination; those dreams of ancient simplicity, of primitive manners, of liberty at once heroic and pastoral, which the fashion and illusion of the moment had transported from the other side of the Atlantic,—­all contributed to fascinate the spirit of the Continent, and nourish in the mind of the people contempt for their own institutions, and fanaticism for a social renovation.

Holland was the workshop of innovators; it was there that, sheltered by a complete toleration of religious dogmata, by an almost republican liberty, and by an authorised system of contraband, all that could not be uttered in Paris, in Italy, in Spain, in Germany, was printed.  Since Descartes, independent philosophy had selected Holland for its asylum:  Boyle had there rendered scepticism popular:  it was the land sacred to insurrection against all the abuses of power, and had subsequently become the seat of conspiracy against kings.  Every one who had a suspicious idea to promulgate, an attack to make, a name to conceal, went to borrow the presses of Holland.  Voltaire, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Diderot, Helvetius, Mirabeau himself—­had gone there to naturalise their writings in this land of publicity.  The mask of concealment which these writers assumed in Amsterdam deceived no one, but it effected their security.  All the crimes of thought were there inviolable; it was at the same time the asylum and the arsenal of new ideas.  An active and vast trade in books made a speculation of the overthrow of religion and thrones.  The prodigious demand for prohibited works which were thus circulated in the world, proved sufficiently the increasing alteration of ancient beliefs in the mind of the people.

XI.