ABSTRACT
The radicals' arguments were more consistent and less weighed down by opposition for opposition's sake than those of the Foxites, but they also used the war to further their primary concern to demand parliamentary reform and, in particular, the extension of the franchise. The radicals were hostile to the conflict against France mainly because they supported the French Revolution. Like opposition writers and MPs, radicals blamed the war on William Pitt and the Combined Powers of Europe, and they criticized its counter-revolutionary objects. Radical activists were more concerned with making war on political 'tyranny' in Britain than with opposing the government's war against France. With quiet persistence, the Friends of Peace began a campaign against the war in the 1790s that would continue and develop greatly in the post-Amiens phase of the conflict. The hostility of both Foxites and radicals to the war was sometimes instrumental, thinly veiling ulterior motives.
