William Pitt the Younger provinces: the predominantly French Lower Canada and the predominantly English Upper Canada. In August 1792, coincident with the capture of Louis XVI by the French revolutionaries, George III appointed Pitt as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, a position whose incumbent was responsible for the coastal defences of the realm. The King had in 1791 offered him a Knighthood of the Garter, but he suggested the honour go to his elder brother, the second Earl of Chatham. An early favourable response to the French Revolution encouraged many in Great Britain to reopen the issue of parliamentary reform, which had been
William Pitt the Younger opinion in support of the war. The Pitt government waged a vigorous propaganda campaign contrasting the ordered society of Britain dominated by the aristocracy and the gentry vs. the "anarchy" of the French revolution, and always sought to associate British "radicals" with the revolution in France. Though the Pitt government did drastically reduce civil liberties and created a nationwide spy network with ordinary people being encouraged to denounce any "radicals" that may have been in their mist, the historian Eric Evans argued the picture of Pitt's "reign of terror" as portrayed by the Marxist historian E.P Thompson is incorrect, stating