eclaration of
war. But bitter as the need of such a struggle was to him, he accepted
it with the less reluctance that war, as he trusted, would check the
progress of "French principles" in England itself.

The worst issue of this panic was the series of legislative measures in
which it found expression. The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended, a bill
against seditious assemblies restricted the liberty of public meeting,
and a wider scope was given to the Statute of Treasons. Prosecution
after prosecution was directed against the Press; the sermons of some
dissenting ministers were indicted as seditious; and the conventions of
sympathizers with France were roughly broken up. The worst excesses of
this panic were witnessed in Scotland, where young Whigs, whose only
offence was an advocacy of parliamentary reform, were sentenced to
transportation, and where a brutal Judge openly expressed his regret
that the practice of torture in seditious cases should have fallen into
disuse. But the panic soon passed away for sheer want of material to
feed on. The bloodshed and anarchy of the Jacobin rule disgusted the
last sympathizers with France. To staunch Whigs like Romilly, the
French, after the massacres of October, seemed a mere "nation of
tigers." The good sense of the nation discovered the unreality of the
dangers which had driven it to its short-lived frenzy; and when the
leaders of the Corresponding Society, a body which expressed sympathy
with France, were brought to trial in 1794 on a charge of high treason,
their acquittal told that all active terror was over. So far indeed was
the nation from any danger of social overthrow that, save for occasional
riots to which the poor were goaded by sheer want of bread, no social
disturbance troubled England during the twenty years of struggle which
lay before it. But though the public terror passed, it left a terrible
legacy behind. The blind reaction against all reform which had sprung
from the panic lasted on when the panic was forgotten. For nearly a
quarter of a century it was hard to get a hearing for any measure which
threatened change to an existing institution, beneficial though the
change might be. Even the philanthropic movement which so nobly
characterized the time found itself checked and hampered by the dread of
revolution.

Easy however as Pitt found it to deal with "French principles" at home,
he found it less easy to deal with French armies abroad. The very
excellences