wed the growing ardour for the contest. The rejection of
his last offers indeed made a contest inevitable. Both sides ceased from
diplomatic communications, and in February 1793 France issued her
Declaration of War.

[Sidenote: The Panic.]

From that moment Pitt's power was at an end. His pride, his immoveable
firmness, and the general confidence of the nation, still kept him at
the head of affairs; but he could do little save drift along with a tide
of popular feeling which he never fully understood. Around him the
country broke out in a fit of passion and panic which rivalled the
passion and panic over sea. The confidence of France in its illusions
as to opinion in England deluded for the moment even Englishmen
themselves. The partisans of Republicanism were in reality but a few
handfuls of men who played at gathering Conventions, and at calling
themselves citizens and patriots, in childish imitation of what was
going on across the Channel. But in the mass of Englishmen the dread of
these revolutionists passed for the hour into sheer panic. Even the bulk
of the Whig party believed property and the constitution to be in peril,
and forsook Fox when he still proclaimed his faith in France and the
Revolution. The "Old Whigs," as they called themselves, with the Duke of
Portland, Earls Spencer and Fitzwilliam, and Mr. Windham at their head,
followed Burke in giving their adhesion to the Government. Pitt himself,
though little touched by the political reaction which was to constitute
the creed of those who represented themselves as "Pittites," was shaken
by the dream of social danger, which was turning the wisest heads about
him. For a moment at least his cool good sense bent to believe in the
existence of "thousands of bandits" who were ready to rise against the
throne, to plunder every landlord, and to sack London. "Paine is no
fool," he said to his niece, who quoted to him a passage from the
_Rights of Man_, in which that author had vindicated the principles of
the Revolution. "He is perhaps right; but if I did what he wants I
should have thousands of bandits on my hands to-morrow and London
burnt." It was this sense of social danger which alone reconciled him to
the war. It would have been impossible indeed for Pitt, or for any other
English statesman, to have stood idly by while France annexed the
Netherlands and marched to annex Holland. He must in any case have
fought even had France not forced him to fight by her d