the opposition of Pitt,
secured 102 votes against 122. The Prime Minister's chief argument was
that if Dissenters were admitted to civic rights they might use their
power to overthrow the Church Establishment.[20] Clearly the opinion of
the House was drifting away from him on that question; and it is a proof
of his growing indifference to questions of Reform that now, four days
after the assembly of the States-General of France at Versailles, he
should have held to views so repugnant to the spirit of the age.

Thenceforth that question could not be debated solely on its own merits.
The attacks made by the French National Assembly on the Church of
France, particularly the confiscation of its tithes and landed property,
soon aroused heated feelings in this country, though on a subject of a
wholly different kind. The result was that, while Dissenters peacefully
agitated for permission to act as citizens, they were represented as
endeavouring to despoil the Church, after the fashion of Talleyrand and
Mirabeau. A work by a Manchester merchant, Thomas Walker, reveals the
influence of this question on the political activities of the time. The
Nonconformists of that town and county hoped to gain a majority in next
session or in the following Parliament, while the High Churchmen, to the
cry of "The Church in Danger," declared the two Acts of Charles II to be
the bulwarks of the constitution.[21] This cry was everywhere taken up,
with the result that in the Parliament elected in 1790 the Tories gained
ground. Consequently, even the able advocacy of Fox on behalf of
religious liberty failed to save Beaufoy's motion from a crushing
defeat. Pitt spoke against the proposal and carried the House with him
by 294 votes to 105. This vote illustrates the baleful influence exerted
by the French Revolution on the cause of Reform in these islands.

A second example soon occurred. Only three days later Flood brought
forward a motion for Parliamentary Reform which the wildest of alarmists
could not call revolutionary. He proposed to add to the House of Commons
one hundred members, elected by the resident householders of the
counties, those areas being far less corrupt than the towns; and he
suggested that, if the total number of members were deemed excessive,
fifty seats in the smallest boroughs might be declared vacant. This
proposal differed but little from that of Pitt in the session of 1785,
which aimed at disfranchising thirty-six decayed