Yet there was something in it of the faults which had made the continental nobilities unpopular. It was narrow and exclusive, and was apt to regard office and emolument as the special perquisite of its own members. Against such an aristocracy Pitt stood as the champion of so much of equality as the conditions of English society admitted of. Representing, as he did, the King and the middle classes, he advocated a rational government, founded on the best political science of the day. It was impossible that if war broke out with France he should continue his work of internal reform. Events happening in France were but superficially comprehended in England. At first some of the Whigs, following Fox, extended sympathy to a revolutionary movement which put forward as its object the establishment of constitutional government. As soon as disorder and violence showed themselves in France a large section of the Whigs, including most of the great landowners, joined the Tories in viewing the movement with distrust, though the latter had confidence in Pitt, who sought to maintain friendship between the two governments. Neither party had any clear perception of the fact that the revolution was produced by social as well as political causes, and that its real aim was to complete the destruction of the old feudal order long since in slow process of decay. The special causes of discontent operating in France were left unnoted. The comparative excellence of government in England made Englishmen callous to the past misgovernment of France. The fact was patent that the revolution declared war on established institutions, and exhibited propagandist tendencies. Public opinion, therefore, soon set strongly against it. Already, in 1790, Burke, breaking loose from Fox, published his ‘Reflections on the French Revolution,’ in which his eloquent declamations against men who were destroying continuity between the past and the present, helped to ripen the distrust that already existed in the minds of his countrymen into fear and hatred. After the fall of the throne and the September massacres, intense alarm prevailed lest the spread of democratic principles should produce similar convulsions in England. In reality there was no danger. The middle classes were not jealous of the upper; the people were not starving. Societies established for the promotion of French principles obtained but a few hundred supporters, a strong proof of the unmoved disposition of the people at large. The panic, however, if unfounded, was genuine. To secure themselves against danger the governing classes desired to suppress the revolution by force of arms, and loudly demanded the reclosing of the Scheldt and the evacuation of Belgium as the price of peace.