At once, as contemporaries assure us, it divided the nation into two parties.

On both sides it precipitated opinion.

With a long-resounding blast on his golden trumpet Burke had unfurled a new flag, and half the nation hurried to rally to it--that half which had scouted his views on America, which had bitterly disliked his plan of Economic Reform, which had mocked his ideas on religious toleration, and which a moment before had hated and reviled him beyond all men living for his fierce tenacity in the impeachment of Warren Hastings.

The king said to everybody who came near him that the book was a good book, a very good book, and every gentleman ought to read it.

The universities began to think of offering the scarlet gown of their most honourable degree to the assailant of Price and the Dissenters.