CHAPTER IX.
BURKE AND HIS PARTY--PROGRESS OF THE REVOLUTION--IRELAND--LAST YEARS For some months after the publication of the _Reflections_, Burke kept up the relations of an armed peace with his old political friends.
The impeachment went on, and in December (1790) there was a private meeting on the business connected with it, between Pitt, Burke, Fox, and Dundas, at the house of the Speaker.

It was described by one who knew, as most snug and amiable, and there seems to have been a general impression in the world at this moment that Fox might by some means be induced to join Pitt.

What troubled the slumbers of good Whigs like Gilbert Elliot, was the prospect of Fox committing himself too strongly on French affairs.

Burke himself was in the deepest dejection at the prospect; for Fox did not cease to express the most unqualified disapproval of the _Reflections_; he thought that, even in point of composition, it was the worst thing that Burke had ever published.

It was already feared that his friendship for Sheridan was drawing him farther away from Burke, with whom Sheridan had quarrelled, into a course of politics that would both damage his own reputation and break up the strong union of which the Duke of Portland was the nominal head.
New floods in France had not yet carried back the ship of state into raging waters.