ABSTRACT
The English-speaking population was mainly composed of conservative Loyalist refugees from the American Revolution. Most Americans at the time were quite consciously of English descent, and there had been a large recent immigration from the Protestant north of Ireland. These Anglo-Saxons traded with each other with only a brief interruption during the American Revolution. The English-speaking world was expanded by the transportation of about two thousand United Irish to Australia. Among positive sympathizers with the French Revolution in the English-speaking countries there was an inclination to excuse even the Terror as a passing frenzy or necessity provoked by foreign intervention. It had been part of a civil struggle within the English-speaking community as a whole. There was very little knowledge or understanding in the English-speaking world of actual conditions in Belgium, Holland, the German Rhineland, Switzerland, or Italy. Dublin, with 200,000 inhabitants, was by far the largest city in the English-speaking world after London.
