many years for revolution, but at least there was place for hearty
discontent and a seeking after new methods. Of that temper two men so
different as the elder Pitt and Wilkes are the political symbols. The
former's rise to power upon the floodtide of popular enthusiasm meant
nothing so much as a protest against the cynical corruption of the
previous generation. Wilkes was a sign that the populace was slowly
awaking to a sense of its own power. The French creed was too purely
logical, too obviously the outcome of alien conditions, to fit in its
entirety the English facts; and, it must be admitted, memories of wooden
shoes played not a little part in its rejection. The rights of man made
only a partial appeal until the miseries of Pitt's wars showed what was
involved in that rejection; and then it was too late. But no one could
feel without being stirred the illumination of Montesquieu; and
Rousseau's questions, even if they proved unanswerable, were stuff for
thought. The work of the forty years before the French Revolution is
nothing so much as a preparation for Bentham. The torpor slowly passes.
The theorists build an edifice each part of which a man whose passion is
attuned to the English nature can show to be obsolete and ugly. If the
French thinkers had conferred no other benefit, that, at least, would
have been a supreme achievement.



II


The first book to show the signs of change came in 1757. John Brown's
_Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times_ is largely
forgotten now; though it went through seven editions in a year and was
at once translated into French. Brown was a clergyman, a minor planet in