ABSTRACT
The first Parliamentary discussion of the issues that had been raised by the French Revolution seems to have taken place on the introduction of the Army Estimates on February 5, 1790. A private member considered the Estimates too high, and Pitt hinted both at the French Revolution and at the Belgian disturbances as reasons for refraining from Army reductions. And then Fox, while suggesting that Britain’s diplomatic position was strong enough to make reductions possible, was drawn on to a friendly obiter dictum on the Revolutionary soldiery of France. A century of political rivalry with the Bourbon monarchy and a century of rather one-sided criticism of the intolerance of the French Catholic hierarchy had ensured a universal welcome in England to the first changes of 1789. Burke had helped the propertied classes, at least, to show good reason for criticising everything that had been done in France since the first assembly of the Estates General in May 1789.
