ABSTRACT
The first real contention in the new Parliament at 1790 came on December 13th, when James Fox’s young friend, Charles Grey, declaring the information supplied by Ministers on the Nootka Sound dispute to be insufficient, moved for the production of further papers. There followed a clever Opposition speech from Fox, a long anti-revolutionary oration from James Burke, seconded by William Windham, Lord Erskine’s defence, of his membership of the Friends of the People and Sheridan’s assault on the clamourers and on the inconsistencies of the personal record both of William Pitt and Burke. Fox’s speech stands high in the annals of Parliamentary oratory and proved, in fact, the opening of what his admirers have always considered the noblest and most useful part of his career. Republican success in France undoubtedly stimulated the bolder spirits in British societies to extremism.
