[There is an] advantage, and even necessity, of uniting at this time in the public service the great bulk of the landed property of the country, and … - William Wyndham Grenville, 1st Baron Grenville

You can hardly form to yourself an idea of the labour I have gone through; but I am repaid by the maintenance of peace, which is all this country has to desire. We shall now, I hope, for a very long period indeed enjoy this blessing, and cultivate a situation of prosperity unexampled in our history. The state of our commerce, our revenue, and, above all, that of our public funds, is such as to hold out ideas which but a few years ago would indeed have appeared visionary, and which there is now every hope of realizing.

Besides this, their lordships would perceive in these societies a studious imitation of the proceedings of the National Convention: they adopted all their phrases in speaking, and all their forms in transacting business. All this proved, to his mind, that their views were to familiarize the lower classes of the people of this country to these proceedings, in order to prepare them to come to a resolution, for the destruction of all rank, distinction, and order in society: every thing was to be swallowed up in the jacobinical term, citizen.

The object of effecting a revolution in this country by inflaming the worst passions of the lowest orders of society has been unremittedly pursued for many years past. During the war its success was in great measure impeded by the large amount of military force then at the disposal of Government, by the extraordinary powers given by Parliament to the Crown, and by the great interest which the mass of our community took, and very justly, in the success of that contest.
Since the peace the progress of these designs has been manifestly much more rapid. It has indeed been favoured, from time to time, by circumstances of temporary and local distress; but these have not been greater, they may be truly said to have been much less, than had before been frequently experienced without leading to any such results. So great a change as has been shown since the peace in the general temper and conduct of a large proportion of our population, has perhaps rarely occurred in any country. It seems no exaggeration to say, that if the promoters of general confusion can make as much new way in the next three or four years as they have done in the last, we must consider insurrection and civil bloodshed as inevitable; though even then we may hope that their issue would not be doubtful.