nel, a reserve passing into disapproval. The pen of Burke
was denouncing the Revolution as the very negation of those principles
on which English liberty rested. The priests and nobles who had fled
from the new France were finding pity and welcome on English shores. And
now that France flung herself on an armed Europe to win freedom for its
peoples from their kings, England stood coldly apart. To men frenzied
with a passionate enthusiasm, and frenzied yet more with a sudden terror
at the dangers they were encountering, such an attitude of neutrality in
such a quarter seemed like a stab in the back.

[Sidenote: Their efforts in England.]

But that this attitude was that of the English people as a whole was
incredible to the French enthusiasts. Conscious as no Englishman could
be conscious of the great evils they had overthrown, of the great
benefits they had won for their country, they saw in the attitude of
England only the sympathy of an aristocracy with the aristocracy they
had struck down. The cries for a parliamentary reform which reached them
across the Channel became in their ears cries of a people as powerless
and oppressed as the people of France had been. They still clung to the
hope of England's aid in the emancipation of Europe from despotism and
superstition, but they came now to believe that England must itself be
emancipated before such an aid could be given. Their first work
therefore they held to be the bringing about a revolution in England
which might free the people from the aristocracy and the aristocratic
government which held it down. But this was far from being all the work
they looked to accomplishing. The aristocracy which oppressed the people
at home oppressed, as they believed, great peoples beyond the bounds of
England itself. It was subjecting to its sway nation after nation in
India. Its rule over Ireland was a masterpiece of tyranny. To rouse
India, to rouse Ireland to a struggle which should shake off the English
yoke, became necessary steps to the establishment of freedom in England
itself. From the moment therefore that the opposition between the two
countries declared itself, French agents were busy "sowing the
revolution" in each quarter. In Ireland they entered into communication
with the United Irishmen. In India they appeared at the courts of the
native princes, and above all at the court of Mysore. Meanwhile in
England itself they strove through a number of associations, which had