England also was ripening,
and the instinct of caste, incarnated in George III, found its
expression through Edmund Burke. In 1790 Burke published his
"Reflections," and on May 6, 1791, in a passionate outbreak in the House
of Commons, he renounced his friendship with Fox as a traitor to his
order and his God. Men of Burke's temperament appreciated intuitively
that there could be no peace between the rising civilization and the
old, one of the two must destroy the other, and very few of them
conceived it to be possible that the enfranchised French peasantry and
the small bourgeoisie could endure the shock of all that, in their
eyes, was intelligent, sacred, and martial in the world.
Indeed, aristocracy had, perhaps, some justification for arrogance,
since the revolt in France fell to its lowest depth of impotence between
the meeting at Pilnitz in August, 1791, and the reorganization of the
Committee of Public Safety in July, 1793. Until August, 1792, the
executive authority remained with the King, but the court of Louis was
the focus of resistance to the Revolution, and even though a
quasi-prisoner the King was still strong.
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