ABSTRACT
The English generation with which people will be mainly concerned in these pages appeared to be doubly blessed; the dawn of 1776 became the high noon of 1789, as promise moved dramatically to fulfillment. English feelings ran strong on the subject of the corrupt system of parliamentary representation, on the restrictions of tolerance for Catholics and Dissenters, on the immoralities of slave trading. The careful student of comparative ideology will perhaps be aware of the incompleteness of this new English version of the "triple forg'd" revolutionary consciousness. Between 1776 and 1789, certain philosophical absolutes, enunciated with passion and sincerity, served to create a deep ideological gap between what was and what ought to be. Nowhere was the Anglo-French fraternity of radical ideologies more direct—and as personally ill-fated in proportion to its political intimacy—than in the capital city of the Revolution itself.
