He deplored Fox's praise of the army for breaking their lawful allegiance, and then he proceeded with ominous words to the effect that, if any friend of his should concur in any measures which should tend to introduce such a democracy as that of France, he would abandon his best friends and join with his worst enemies to oppose either the means or the end.
This has unanimously been pronounced one of the most brilliant and effective speeches that Burke ever made.

Fox rose with distress on every feature, and made the often-quoted declaration of his debt to Burke:--"If all the political information I have learned from books, all which I have gained from science, and all which my knowledge of the world and its affairs has taught me, were put into one scale, and the improvement which I have derived from my right honourable friend's instruction and conversation were placed in the other, I should be at a loss to decide to which to give the preference.

I have learnt more from my right honourable friend than from all the men with whom I ever conversed." All seemed likely to end in a spirit of conciliation until Sheridan rose, and in the plainest terms that he could find, expressed his dissent from everything that Burke had said.

Burke immediately renounced his friendship.

For the first time in his life he found the sympathy of the House vehemently on his side.
In the following month (March 1790) this unpromising incident was succeeded by an aberration which no rational man will now undertake to defend.