" But the alarm which the spread of
revolutionary ideas excited in his mind was displayed, not only
passively in this abstention from the advocacy of measures the
expediency of which must at all times in some degree depend on the tone
of their introduction, but also in active measures of repression, some
of which were not, indeed, unwarranted by precedent, but others of which
can hardly be denied to have been serious inroads on the constitution,
infringements of the freedom of opinion and discussion to which all
Englishmen are entitled, and one of which was, to say the least, a very
perilous extension of a law already sufficiently severe, the statute of
treason. If the French had been content with the overthrow of their own
government and institutions, much as we should have lamented the
indiscriminate rashness and abhorred the atrocities with which their
design was carried out, we should still have adhered to the
unquestionable maxim, that no nation is justified in interfering in the
internal affairs of another. But the Jacobin and Girondin demagogues,
who had now the undisputed sway in Paris, did not limit their views to
their own country, but openly declared themselves the enemies of all
established governments in every country; and the Convention passed a
formal resolution in which they proffered "fraternity and assistance" to
every people which might be inclined to rise against their governments.
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