When Revolution broke out in France in 1789 Bentham was not impressed. He had spoken scathingly in his Principles of Legislation of those who run after political liberty, or ‘the most equal distribution which can be imagined of political power’, people who would imperil all the happiness of a nation ‘for the sake of transporting power into the hands of those whom an invincible ignorance will not permit to use it, except for their own destruction’. As for the Rights of Man, they were nonsense, ‘nonsense on stilts’, or, as Burke was to say, ‘blurred paltry shreds of paper’. Indeed when the doctrine of the Rights of Man crossed the Channel most Englishmen thought to recognize in them the familiar and well-established Common Law rights of Englishmen tricked out in the gaudy plumage of Gallic rhetoric, and none the better for that. They were not unsympathetic with the French. They thought, and it was the opening theme of Burke's Reflections, that they were at last catching up with the English. The younger Pitt, who was now in charge of affairs, felt it his duty to applaud them, since they were apparently about to equip themselves with a constitution on the English model. A decent system of government might make France more formidable as a rival, but it should make her less obnoxious as a neighbour.