BURKE illustrious personage to whom, in a very few years, he was gratefully to acknowledge his obligation for the indepen- dence and comfort of his latter days, we cannot be surprised that those who intend an uniform and unqualified pane- gyric on his public life, wish to suppress his conduct during this memorable period. We have now arrived at the last and most important era of the life of Burke, when at once dissolving almost every connection of his former life, he threw himself into the arms of those whom he had uniformly and vehemently opposed. The revolution which was taking place in France was hailed by Fox as the dawn of returning liberty and justice, while Burke regarded it as the meteoric glare of anarchy and ruin. In a debate on the army estimates for 1790, adverting to the revolution in France, Fox con- sidered that event as a reason for rendering a smaller military establishment necessary on our part:-The new form," he said, "that the government of France was likely to assume, would, he was persuaded, make her a better neighbour, and less propense to hosility, than when she was subject to the cabal and intrigues of ambitious and interested statesmen." Burke soon after delivered his sentiments on the sub- ject. Fully coinciding with Fox respecting the evils of the old despotism, and the dangers that accrued from it to this country, he thought very differently of the tranquillity to neighbours and happiness to themselves, likely to ensue from the late proceedings in France. Warming, as he advanced in the argument, he observed, " In the last age we had been in danger of being entangled, by the example of France, in the net of relentless despotism. Our present danger, from the model of a people whose character knew no medium, was that of being led through an admiration of successful fraud and violence, to imitate the excesses of an irrational, unprincipled, proscribing, confiscating, plundering, ferocious, bloody, and tyrannical democracy. Sheridan expressed his disapprobation of the remarks
