of right, which God had implanted in the people, would rule; there
could be no wars; armies and fleets would become useless; taxes would
amount to nothing. All the nations would form one grand republic, with
a universal convention sitting at the world's centre, to watch over the
rights of man! Liberty, virtue, happiness, seemed ready to descend upon
the earth.

"Jam nova progenies caelo demittitur alto,
Ac toto surget gens aurea mundo."

As each week brought the news of some stupendous change, a kind of
madness seized upon the minds of men. Fanatics were jubilant.
"Revolutions," they said, "can do no wrong; all are for the best."
Englishmen, hitherto sane, forgot their nationality, and became violent
Frenchmen. So strongly did the current set in this direction, that the
massacres of September, the execution of the King, the despotism of the
Directory and the Consulship could not turn it, until Napoleon united
all France under him and all England against him. As late as 1793, such
men as James Watt, Jr., and the poet Wordsworth were in Paris, on
intimate terms with Robespierre and his Committee.

Before 1789, there was no particular discontent in England. Some talk
there had been of reform in the representation, and the usual
complaints of the burden of taxation. The Dissenters had been trying to
get the Corporation and Test Acts repealed, without much success. But
nothing beyond occasional meetings and petitions to Parliament would
have occurred, had it not been for the explosion in France, then, as
since, the political powder-magazine of Europe. The Whig party had seen
with pleasure the beginning of the French reforms. Paine, who had
partaken of Mr. Burke's hospitality at Beaconsfield, wrote to him