utterly unable to withstand the energy of the French government and the talent of the republican generals, and in trifling expeditions, injurious if they failed, and useless if successful. Meanwhile the enormous expenditure of the day caused a corresponding increase of the public burdens, and, as was foreboded, a ruinous accession to the public debt. A large party, who were far from joining with those that would willingly have made England the subject of an experiment similar to the one going on in France, denied both the necessity and the expediency of the contest in which we were engaged; party spirit reached a frantic height; and these men, as sincere friends to their country as those who most strenuously supported the arbitrary measures of government, were denounced, and confounded with the small minority really hostile to domestic order. And no doubt the oppressive conduct of the administration drove many persons to extremes, which, in cooler moments and under a more equitable policy, they would not have countenanced. Then came the trials of Muir and Palmer in Scotland, in 1793, of Hardy and Horne Tooke in 1794, the Alien Bill, the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, and other measures calculated, in the language of the times, to prevent the spread of revolutionary principles, for which the minister was hailed by one party as the saviour of his country from anarchy, and denounced by another as a pillar of despotism, an enemy to the free constitution of his country, a deserter from the principles of his youth, and a persecutor of those associates who still adhered to them. Increased discontent was met by increased severity; and, after the insults offered to the King’s person as he proceeded to open the session of parliament in 1796, the famous bills, for the prevention of seditious meetings and for the better security of his Majesty’s person and government, commonly called the Pitt and Grenville Acts, were introduced and carried, not without the utmost indignation and the most determined opposition by all means short of forcible resistance, both within the walls of parliament and without.