The affairs of England were then in a critical position. The ministry of PITT was carrying on a fierce war with republican France, the necessity for which had split the public into two great parties. The liberal party alleged, that “the whole misfortunes of Europe and all the crimes of France had arisen from the iniquitous coalition of kings to overturn its infant freedom;—that, if its government had been left alone, it would neither have stained its hands with innocent blood at home nor pursued plans of aggrandizement abroad; and that the Republic, relieved from the pressure of external danger, and no longer roused by the call of patriotic duty, would have quietly turned its swords into pruning-hooks, and, renouncing the allurements of foreign conquests, thought only of promoting the internal felicity of its citizens”. These sentiments, though supported by the extraordinary eloquence of FOX, SHERIDAN, ERSKINE, and others, had but little weight with the minister or the great body of the public. It was impossible to deny that the power of the French Republic was daily increasing, and threatened the subjugation of the greater part of Europe. BUONAPARTE had overrun Italy, and broken the power of Austria, which, by the treaty of Leoben, was compelled to cede the Netherlands to France, allow the free navigation of the Rhine, and recognise the independence of the newly-erected Italian republics. Spain, also, had declared war against Britain, which was thus left to contend singly against the power of France; for the Directory had refused the basis of peace proposed by LORD MALMESBURY, that of a mutual restitution of conquests. To add to these embarrassments, during the year 1797 credit became affected, and the Bank of England suspended cash payments; mutinies broke out in the fleets at Spithead and the Nore; and Ireland was on the verge of rebellion. But the talents of PITT were equal to the occasion, and his power rose higher than ever, when his prognostications were shortly after (in December, 1797) confirmed by the unprovoked attack upon Switzerland by the French. The impolicy of this proceeding was equal to its infamy; for nothing ever done by the revolutionary government contributed so powerfully to cool the ardour of its partisans in Europe, and to open the eyes of the intelligent and respectable classes in every other country to its ultimate designs. Its effect on the friends of freedom in England may be judged of from the indignant protest of SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH, himself once a warm admirer of the French Revolution, who, in his defence of JEAN PELTIER, in 1803, for a libel on BUONAPARTE, declared, “the invasion and destruction of Switzerland an act, in comparison with which all the deeds of rapine and blood perpetrated in the world are innocence itself”. Even before this, the true character of the revolution had been detected by the democratic COLERIDGE, who gave public utterance to his feelings of horror and disgust in that noble