It is certain that England had no necessary communion with the arms and tortures of the Continental tyrannies, and that she stood at the parting of the ways.

England was indeed an aristocracy, but a liberal one; and the ideas growing in the middle classes were those which had already made America, and were remaking France.

The fiercest Jacobins, such as Danton, were deep in the liberal literature of England.

The people had no religion to fight for, as in Russia or La Vendee.

The parson was no longer a priest, and had long been a small squire.