HIS FIRST SPEECHES IN PARLIAMENT.--ROCKINGHAM ADMINISTRATION.--
COALITION.--INDIA BILL.--RE-ELECTION FOR STAFFORD.
The period at which Mr. Sheridan entered upon his political career was,
in every respect, remarkable. A persevering and vindictive war against
America, with the folly and guilt of which the obstinacy of the Court
and the acquiescence of the people are equally chargeable, was fast
approaching that crisis, which every unbiassed spectator of the contest
had long foreseen,--and at which, however humiliating to the haughty
pretensions of England, every friend to the liberties of the human race
rejoiced. It was, perhaps, as difficult for this country to have been
long and virulently opposed to such principles as the Americans asserted
in this contest, without being herself corrupted by the cause which she
maintained, as it was for the French to have fought, in the same
conflict, by the side of the oppressed, without catching a portion of
that enthusiasm for liberty, which such an alliance was calculated to
inspire. Accordingly, while the voice of philosophy was heard along the
neighboring shores, speaking aloud those oracular warnings, which
preceded the death of the Great Pan of Despotism, the courtiers and
lawyers of England were, with an emulous spirit of servility, advising
and sanctioning such strides of power, as would not have been unworthy
of the most dark and slavish times.
When we review, indeed, the history of the late reign, and consider how
invariably the arms and councils of Great Britain, in her Eastern wars,
her conflict with America, and her efforts against revolutionary France,
were directed to the establishment and perpetuation of despotic
principles, it seems little less than a miracle that her own liberty
should have escaped with life from the contagion. Never, indeed, can she
be sufficiently grateful to the few patriot spirits of this period, to
whose courage and eloquence she owes the high station of freedom yet
left to her;--never can her sons pay a homage too warm to the memory of
such men as a Chatham, a Fox, and a Sheridan; who, however much they may
have sometimes sacrificed to false views of expediency, and, by
compromise with friends and coalition with foes, too often weakened
their hold upon public confidence; however the attraction of the Court
may have sometimes made them librate in their orbit, were yet the saving
lights of Liberty in those times, and alone preserved the ark of the
Constitution from foundering in the foul and troubled waters that
encompassed it.
Not only were the public events, in which Mr. Sheridan was now called to
take a part, of a nature more extraordinary and awful than had often
been exhibited on the theatre of politics, but the leading actors in the
scene were of that loftier order of intellect, which Nature seems to
keep in reserve for the ennoblement of such great occasions. Two of
these, Mr. Burke and Mr. Fox, were already in the full maturity of their
fame and talent,--while the third, Mr. Pitt, was just upon the point of
entering, with the most auspicious promise, into the same splendid
career:
"_Nunc cuspide Patris
Inclytus, Herculeas olim mature sagittas._"
Though the administration of that day, like many other ministries of the
same reign, was chosen more for the pliancy than the strength of its
materials, yet Lord North himself was no ordinary man, and, in times of
less difficulty and under less obstinate dictation, might have ranked as
a useful and most popular minister. It is true, as the defenders of his
measures state, that some of the worst aggressions upon the rights of
the Colonies had been committed before he succeeded to power. But his
readiness to follow in these rash footsteps, and to deepen every fatal
impression which they had made;--his insulting reservation of the Tea
Duty, by which he contrived to embitter the only measure of concession
that was wrung from him;--the obsequiousness, with which he made himself
the channel of the vindictive feelings of the Court, in that memorable
declaration (rendered so truly mock-heroic by the event) that "a total
repeal of the Port Duties could not be thought of, till America was
prostrate at the feet of England;"--all deeply involve him in the shame
of that disastrous period, and identify his name with measures as
arbitrary and headstrong, as have ever disgraced the annals of the
English monarchy.
The playful wit and unvarying good-humor of this nobleman formed a
striking contrast to the harsh and precipitate policy, which it was his
lot, during twelve stormy years, to enforce:--and, if his career was as
headlong as the torrent near its fall, it may also be said to have been
as shining and as smooth. These attractive qualities secured to him a
considerable share of personal popularity; and, had fortune ultimately
smiled on his councils, success would, as usual, have reconciled the
people of England to any means, however arbitrary, by which it had been
attained. But the calamities, and, at last, the hopelessness of the
conflict, inclined them to moralize upon its causes and character. The
hour of Lord North's ascendant was now passing rapidly away, and Mr.
Sheridan could not have joined the Opposition, at a conjuncture more
favorable to the excitement of his powers, or more bright in the views
which it opened upon his ambition.
He made his first speech in Parliament on the 20th of November, 1780,
when a petition was presented to the House, complaining of the undue
election of the sitting members (himself and Mr. Monckton) for Stafford.
It was rather lucky for him that the occasion was one in which he felt
personally interested, as it took away much of that appearance of
anxiety for display, which might have attended his first exhibition upon
any general subject. The fame, however, which he had already acquired by
his literary talents, was sufficient, even on this question, to awaken
all the curiosity and expectation of his audience; and accordingly we
are told in the report of his speech, that "he was heard with particular
attention, the House being uncommonly still while he was speaking." The
indignation, which he expressed on this occasion at the charges brought
by the petition against the electors of Stafford, was coolly turned into
ridicule by Mr. Rigby, Paymaster of the Forces. But Mr. Fox, whose
eloquence was always ready at the call of good nature, and, like the
shield of Ajax, had "ample room and verge enough," to protect not only
himself but his friends, came promptly to the aid of the young orator;
and, in reply to Mr. Rigby, observed, that "though those ministerial
members, who chiefly robbed and plundered their constituents, might
afterwards affect to despise them, yet gentlemen, who felt properly the
nature of the trust allotted to them, would always treat them and speak
of them with respect."
It was on this night, as Woodfall used to relate, that Mr. Sheridan,
after he had spoken, came up to him in the gallery, and asked, with much
anxiety, what he thought of his first attempt. The answer of Woodfall,
as he had the courage afterwards to own, was, "I am sorry to say I do
not think that this is your line--you had much better have stuck to your
former pursuits." On hearing which, Sheridan rested his head upon his
hand for a few minutes, and then vehemently exclaimed, "It is in me,
however, and, by G--, it shall come out."
It appears, indeed, that upon many persons besides Mr. Woodfall the
impression produced by this first essay of his oratory was far from
answerable to the expectations that had been formed. The chief defect
remarked in him was a thick and indistinct mode of delivery, which,
though he afterwards greatly corrected it, was never entirely removed.
It is not a little amusing to find him in one of his early speeches,
gravely rebuking Mr. Rigby and Mr. Courtenay [Footnote: Feb. 26.--On the
second reading of the Bill for the better regulation of His Majesty's
Civil List Revenue.] for the levity and raillery with which they treated
the subject before the House,--thus condemning the use of that weapon in
other hands, which soon after became so formidable in his own. The
remarks by which Mr. Courtenay (a gentleman, whose lively wit found
afterwards a more congenial air on the benches of the Opposition)
provoked the reprimand of the new senator for Stafford, are too humorous
to be passed over without, at least, a specimen of their spirit. In
ridiculing the conduct of the Opposition, he observed:--
"Oh liberty! Oh virtue! Oh my country! had been the pathetic, though
fallacious cry of former Oppositions; but the present he was sure acted
on purer motives. They wept over their bleeding country, he had no
doubt. Yet the patriot 'eye in a fine frenzy rolling' sometimes deigned
to cast a wishful squint on the riches and honors enjoyed by the
minister and his venal supporters. If he were not apprehensive of
hazarding a ludicrous allusion, (which he knew was always improper on a
serious subject) he would compare their conduct to that of the
sentimental alderman in one of Hogarth's prints, who, when his daughter
is expiring, wears indeed a parental face of grief and solicitude, but
it is to secure her diamond ring which he is drawing gently from her
finger."
"Mr. Sheridan (says the report) rose and reprehended Mr. Courtenay for
turning every thing that passed into ridicule; for having introduced
into the house a style of reasoning, in his opinion, every way
unsuitable to the gravity and importance of the subjects that came under
their discussion. If they would not act with dignity, he thought they
might, at least, debate with decency. He would not attempt to answer Mr.
Courtenay's arguments, for it was impossible seriously to reply to what,
in every part, had an infusion of ridicule in it. Two of the honorable
gentlemen's similes, however, he must take notice of. The one was his
having insinuated that the Opposition was envious of those who basked in
court sunshine; and desirous merely to get into their places. He begged
leave to remind the honorable gentleman that, though the sun afforded a
genial warmth, it also occasioned an intemperate heat, that tainted and
infected everything it reflected on. That this excessive heat tended to
corrupt as well as to cherish; to putrefy as well as to animate; to dry
and soak up the wholesome juices of the body politic, and turn the whole
of it into one mass of corruption. If those, therefore, who sat near him
did not enjoy so genial a warmth as the honorable gentleman, and those
who like him kept close to the noble Lord in the blue ribbon, he was
certain they breathed a purer air, an air less infected and less
corrupt."
This florid style, in which Mr. Sheridan was not very happy, he but
rarely used in his speeches afterwards.
The first important subject that drew forth any thing like a display of
his oratory was a motion which he made on the 5th of March, 1781, "For
the better regulation of the Police of Westminster." The chief object of
the motion was to expose the unconstitutional exercise of the
prerogative that had been assumed, in employing the military to suppress
the late riots, without waiting for the authority of the civil power.
These disgraceful riots, which proved to what Christianity consequences
the cry of "No Popery" may lead, had the effect, which follows all
tumultuary movements of the people, of arming the Government with new
powers, and giving birth to doctrines and precedents permanently
dangerous to liberty. It is a little remarkable that the policy of
blending the army with the people and considering soldiers as citizens,
which both Montesquieu and Blackstone recommend as favorable to freedom,
should, as applied by Lord Mansfield on this occasion, be pronounced,
and perhaps with more justice, hostile to it; the tendency of such a
practice being, it was said, to weaken that salutary jealousy, with
which the citizens of a free state should ever regard a soldier, and
thus familiarize the use of this dangerous machine, in every possible
service to which capricious power may apply it. The Opposition did not
deny that the measure of ordering out the military, and empowering their
officers to act at discretion without any reference to the civil
magistrate, was, however unconstitutional, not only justifiable but
wise, in a moment of such danger. But the refusal of the minister to
acknowledge the illegality of the proceeding by applying to the House
for an Act of Indemnity, and the transmission of the same discretionary
orders to the soldiery throughout the country, where no such imminent
necessity called for it, were the points upon which the conduct of the
Government was strongly, and not unjustly, censured.
Indeed, the manifest design of the Ministry, at this crisis, to avail
themselves of the impression produced by the riots, as a means of
extending the frontier of their power, and fortifying the doctrines by
which they defended it, spread an alarm among the friends of
constitutional principles, which the language of some of the advocates
of the Court was by no means calculated to allay. Among others, a Noble
Earl,--one of those awkward worshippers of power, who bring ridicule
alike upon their idol and themselves,--had the foolish effrontery, in
the House of Lords, to eulogize the moderation which His Majesty had
displayed, in not following the recent example of the king of Sweden,
and employing the sword, with which the hour of difficulty had armed
him, for the subversion of the Constitution and the establishment of
despotic power. Though this was the mere ebullition of an absurd
individual, yet the bubble on the surface often proves the strength of
the spirit underneath, and the public were justified by a combination of
circumstances, in attributing designs of the most arbitrary nature to
such a Court and such an Administration. Meetings were accordingly held
in some of the principal counties, and resolutions passed, condemning
the late unconstitutional employment of the military. Mr. Fox had
adverted to it strongly at the opening of the Session, and it is a proof
of the estimation in which Mr. Sheridan already stood with his party,
that he was the person selected to bring forward a motion, upon a
subject in which the feelings of the public were so much interested. In
the course of his speech he said:--
"If this doctrine was to be laid down, that the Crown could give orders
to the military to interfere, when, where, and for what length of time
it pleases, then we might bid farewell to freedom. If this was the law,
we should then be reduced to a military government of the very worst
species, in which we should have all the evils of a despotic state,
without the discipline or the security. But we were given to understand,
that we had the best protection against this evil, in the virtue, the
moderation, and the constitutional principles of the sovereign. No man
upon earth thought with more reverence than himself of the virtues and
moderation of the sovereign; but this was a species of liberty which he
trusted would never disgrace an English soil. The liberty that rested on
the virtuous inclinations of any one man, was but suspended despotism;
the sword was not indeed upon their necks, but it hung by the small and
brittle thread of human will."
The following passage of this speech affords an example of that sort of
antithesis of epithet, which, as has been already remarked, was one of
the most favorite contrivances of his style:--
"Was not the conduct of that man or men criminal, who had permitted
those Justices to continue in the commission? Men of _tried
inability_ and _convicted deficiency_! Had no attempt been made
to establish some more effectual system of police, in order that we
might still depend upon the remedy of the bayonet, and that the military
power might be called in to the aid of _contrived weakness_ and
_deliberate inattention_?"
One of the few instances in which he ever differed with his friend, Mr.
Fox, occurred during this session, upon the subject of a Bill which the
latter introduced for the Repeal of the Marriage Act, and which he
prefaced by a speech as characteristic of the ardor, the simplicity, the
benevolence and fearlessness of his disposition, as any ever pronounced
by him in public. Some parts, indeed, of this remarkable speech are in a
strain of feeling so youthful and romantic, that they seem more fit to
be addressed to one of those Parliaments of Love, which were held during
the times of Chivalry, than to a grave assembly employed about the sober
realities of life, and legislating with a view to the infirmities of
human nature.
The hostility of Mr. Fox to the Marriage Act was hereditary, as it had
been opposed with equal vehemence by his father, on its first
introduction in 1753, when a debate not less memorable took place, and
when Sir Dudley Ryder, the Attorney-general of the day, did not hesitate
to advance, as one of his arguments in favor of the Bill, that it would
tend to keep the aristocracy of the country pure, and prevent their
mixture by intermarriage with the mass of the people. However this
anxiety for the "streams select" of noble blood, or views, equally
questionable, for the accumulation of property in great families, may
have influenced many of those with whom the Bill originated,--however
cruel, too, and mischievous, some of its enactments may be deemed, yet
the general effect which the measure was intended to produce, of
diminishing as much as possible the number of imprudent marriages, by
allowing the pilotage of parental authority to continue till the first
quicksands of youth are passed, is, by the majority of the civilized
world, acknowledged to be desirable and beneficial. Mr. Fox, however,
thought otherwise, and though--"bowing," as he said, "to the prejudices
of mankind,"--he consented to fix the age at which young people should
be marriageable without the consent of parents, at sixteen years for the
woman and eighteen for the man, his own opinion was decidedly for
removing all restriction whatever, and for leaving the "heart of youth"
which, in these cases, was "wiser than the head of age," without limit
or control, to the choice which its own desires dictated.
He was opposed in his arguments, not only by Mr. Sheridan, but by Mr.
Burke, whose speech on this occasion was found among his manuscripts
after his death, and is enriched, though short, by some of those golden
sentences, which he "scattered from his urn" upon every subject that
came before him. [Footnote: In alluding to Mr. Fox's too favorable
estimate of the capability of very young persons to choose for
themselves, he pays the following tribute to his powers:--"He is led
into it by a natural and to him inevitable and real mistake, that the
ordinary race of mankind advance as fast towards maturity of judgment
and understanding as he has done." His concluding words are:--"Have
mercy on the youth of both sexes; protect them from their ignorance and
inexperience; protect one part of life by the wisdom of another; protect
them by the wisdom of laws and the care of nature."] Mr. Sheridan, for
whose opinions upon this subject the well-known history of his own
marriage must have secured no ordinary degree of attention, remarked
that--
"His honorable friend, who brought in the bill, appeared not to be aware
that, if he carried the clause enabling girls to marry at sixteen, he
would do an injury to that liberty of which he had always shown himself
the friend, and promote domestic tyranny, which he could consider only
as little less intolerable than public tyranny. If girls were allowed to
marry at sixteen, they would, he conceived, be abridged of that happy
freedom of intercourse, which modern custom had introduced between the
youth of both sexes; and which was, in his opinion, the best nursery of
happy marriages. Guardians would, in that case, look on their wards with
a jealous eye, from a fear that footmen and those about them might take
advantage of their tender years and immature judgment, and persuade them
into marriage, as soon as they attained the age of sixteen."
It seems somewhat extraordinary that, during the very busy interval
which passed between Mr. Sheridan's first appearance in Parliament and
his appointment under Lord Rockingham's administration in 1782, he
should so rarely have taken a part in the debates that occurred--
interesting as they were, not only from the importance of the topics
discussed, but from the more than usual animation now infused into the
warfare of parties, by the last desperate struggles of the Ministry and
the anticipated triumph of the Opposition. Among the subjects, upon
which he appears to have been rather unaccountably silent, was the
renewal of Mr. Burke's Bill for the Regulation of the Civil List,--an
occasion memorable as having brought forth the maiden speech of Mr.
Pitt, and witnessed the first accents of that eloquence which was
destined, ere long, to sound, like the shell of Misenus, through Europe,
and call kings and nations to battle by its note. The debate upon the
legality of petitions from delegated bodies, in which Mr. Dunning
sustained his high and rare character of a patriot lawyer;--the bold
proposal of Mr. Thomas Pitt, that the Commons should withhold the
supplies, till pledges of amendment in the administration of public
affairs should be given;--the Bill for the exclusion of Excise Officers
and Contractors from Parliament, which it was reserved for a Whig
Administration to pass;--these and other great constitutional questions,
through which Mr. Burke and Mr. Fox fought, side by side, lavishing at
every step the inexhaustible ammunition of their intellect, seem to have
passed away without once calling into action the powers of their new and
brilliant auxiliary, Sheridan.
The affairs of Ireland, too, had assumed at this period, under the
auspices of Mr. Grattan and the example of America, a character of
grandeur, as passing as it was bright,--but which will long be
remembered with melancholy pride by her sons, and as long recall the
memory of that admirable man, to whose patriotism she owed her brief day
of freedom, and upon whose name that momentary sunshine of her sad
history rests. An opportunity of adverting to the events, which had
lately taken place in Ireland, was afforded by Mr. Fox in a motion for
the re-commitment of the Mutiny Bill; and on this subject, perhaps, the
silence of Mr. Sheridan may be accounted for, from his reluctance to
share the unpopularity attached by his countrymen to those high notions
of the supremacy of England, which, on the great question of the
independence of the Irish Parliament, both Mr. Fox and Mr. Burke were
known to entertain. [Footnote: As the few beautiful sentences spoken by
Burke on this occasion, in support of his friend's motion, have been
somewhat strangely omitted in the professed collection of all his
speeches, I shall give them here as they are reported in the
Parliamentary History:--"Mr. Burke said, so many and such great
revolutions had happened of late, that he was not much surprised to hear
the Right Hon. Gentleman (Mr. Jenkinson) treat the loss of the supremacy
of this country over Ireland as a matter of very little consequence.
Thus, one star, and that the brightest ornament of our orrery, having
been suffered to be lost, those who were accustomed to inspect and watch
our political heaven ought not to wonder that it should be followed by
the loss of another.--
So star would follow star, and light light,
Till all was darkness and eternal night."]
Even on the subject of the American war, which was now the important
point that called forth all the resources of attack and defence on both
sides, the co-operation of Mr. Sheridan appears to have been but rare
and casual. The only occasions, indeed, connected with this topic upon
which I can trace him as having spoken at any length, were the charges
brought forward by Mr. Fox against the Admiralty for their mismanagement
of the naval affairs of 1781, and the Resolution of censure on His
Majesty's Ministers moved by Lord John Cavendish. His remarks in the
latter debate upon the two different sets of opinions, by which (as by
the double soul, imagined in Xenophon) the speaking and the voting of
Mr. Rigby were actuated, are very happy:--
"The Right Hon. Gentleman, however, had acted in this day's debate with
perfect consistency. He had assured the House that he thought the Noble
Lord ought to resign his office; and yet he would give his vote for his
remaining in it. In the same manner he had long declared, that he
thought the American war ought to be abandoned; yet had uniformly given
his vote for its continuance. He did not mean, however, to insinuate any
motives for such conduct;--he believed the Right Hon. Gentleman to have
been sincere; he believed that, as a member of Parliament, as a Privy
Councillor, as a private gentleman, he had always detested the American
war as much as any man; but that he had never been able to persuade the
Paymaster that it was a bad war; and unfortunately, in whatever
character he spoke, it was the Paymaster who always voted in that
House."
The infrequency of Mr. Sheridan's exertions upon the American question
combines with other circumstances to throw some doubts upon an anecdote,
which has been, however, communicated to me as coming from an authority
worthy in every respect of the most implicit belief. He is said to have
received, towards the close of this war, a letter from one of the
leading persons of the American Government, expressing high admiration
of his talents and political principles, and informing him that the sum
of twenty thousand pounds had been deposited for him in the hands of a
certain banker, as a mark of the value which the American people
attached to his services in the cause of liberty. To this Mr. S.
returned an answer (which, as well as the letter, was seen, it is said,
by the person with whom the anecdote originated) full of the most
respectful gratitude for the opinion entertained of his services, but
begging leave to decline a gift under such circumstances. That this
would have been the nature of his answer, had any such proposal
occurred, the generally high tone of his political conduct forbids us to
feel any doubt,--but, with respect to the credibility of the transaction
altogether, it is far less easy to believe that the Americans had so
much money to give, than that Mr. Sheridan should have been sufficiently
high-minded to refuse it.
Not only were the occasions very few and select, on which he offered
himself to the attention of the House at this period, but, whenever he
did speak, it was concisely and unpretendingly, with the manner of a
person who came to learn a new road to fame,--not of one who laid claim
to notice upon the credit of the glory he brought with him. Mr. Fox used
to say that he considered his conduct in this respect as a most striking
proof of his sagacity and good taste;--such rare and unassuming displays
of his talents being the only effectual mode he could have adopted, to
win on the attention of his audience, and gradually establish himself in
their favor. He had, indeed, many difficulties and disadvantages to
encounter, of which his own previous reputation was not the least. Not
only did he risk a perilous comparison between his powers, as a speaker
and his fame as a writer, but he had also to contend with that feeling
of monopoly, which pervades the more worldly classes of talent, and
which would lead politicians to regard as an intruder upon their craft,
a man of genius thus aspiring to a station among them, without the usual
qualifications of either birth or apprenticeship to entitle him to it.
[Footnote: There is an anecdote strongly illustrative of this
observation, quoted by Lord John Russell in his able and lively work
"On the Affairs of Europe from the Peace of Utrecht."--Mr. Steele (in
alluding to Sir Thomas Hanmer's opposition to the Commercial Treaty in
1714) said, "I rise to do him honor"--on which many members who had
before tried to interrupt him, called out, 'Taller, Taller;' and as he
went down the House, several said, 'It is not so easy a thing to speak
in the House:' 'He fancies because he can scribble,' &c. &c.,--Slight
circumstances, indeed, (adds Lord John,) but which show at once the
indisposition of the House to the Whig party, and the natural envy of
mankind, long ago remarked by Cicero, towards all who attempt to gain
more than one kind of pre-eminence.] In an assembly, too, whose
deference for rank and property is such as to render it lucky that these
instruments of influence are so often united with honesty and talent,
the son of an actor and proprietor of a theatre had, it must be owned,
most fearful odds against him, in entering into competition with the
sons of Lord Holland and Lord Chatham.
With the same discretion that led him to obtrude himself but seldom on
the House, he never spoke at this period but after careful and even
verbal preparation. Like most of our great orators at the commencement
of their careers, he was in the habit of writing out his speeches before
he delivered them; and, though subsequently he scribbled these
preparatory sketches upon detached sheets, I find that he began by using
for this purpose the same sort of copy books, which he had employed in
the first rough draughts of his plays.
However ill the affairs of the country were managed by Lord North, in
the management of Parliament few ministers have been more smoothly
dexterous; and through the whole course of those infatuated measures,
which are now delivered over, without appeal, to the condemnation of
History, he was cheered along by as full and triumphant majorities, as
ever followed in the wake of ministerial power. At length, however, the
spirit of the people, that last and only resource against the venality
of parliaments and the obstinacy of kings, was roused from its long and
dangerous sleep by the unparalleled exertions of the Opposition leaders,
and spoke out with a voice, always awfully intelligible, against the men
and the measures that had brought England to the brink of ruin. The
effect of this popular feeling soon showed itself in the upper regions.
The country-gentlemen, those birds of political omen, whose migrations
are so portentous of a change of weather, began to flock in numbers to
the brightening quarter of Opposition; and at last, Lord North, after
one or two signal defeats (in spite even of which the Court for some
time clung to him, as the only hope of its baffled, but persevering
revenge), resigned the seals of office in the month of March, 1782, and
an entirely new administration was formed under the promising auspices
of the Marquis of Rockingham.
Mr. Sheridan, as might be expected, shared in the triumph of his party,
by being appointed one of the Under Secretaries of State; and, no doubt,
looked forward to a long and improving tenure of that footing in office
which his talents had thus early procured for him. But, however
prosperous on the surface the complexion of the ministry might be, its
intestine state was such as did not promise a very long existence.
Whiggism is a sort of political Protestantism, and pays a similar tax
for the freedom of its creed, in the multiplicity of opinions which that
very freedom engenders--while true Toryism, like Popery, holding her
children together by the one common doctrine of the infallibility of the
Throne, takes care to repress any schism inconvenient to their general
interest, and keeps them, at least for all intents and purposes of
place-holding, unanimous.
Between the two branches of Opposition that composed the present
administration there were some very important, if not essential,
differences of opinion. Lord Shelburne, the pupil and friend of Lord
Chatham, held the same high but unwise opinions, with respect to the
recognition of American independence, which "the swan-like end" of that
great man has consecrated in our imagination, however much our reason
may condemn them. "Whenever" said Lord Shelburne, "the Parliament of
Great Britain shall acknowledge the independence of America, from that
moment the sun of England is set for ever." With regard to the affairs
of India, too, and the punishment of those who were accused of
mismanaging them, the views of the noble Lord wholly differed from those
of Mr. Fox and his followers--as appeared from the decided part in favor
of Mr. Hastings, which he took in the subsequent measure of the
Impeachment. In addition to these fertile seeds of disunion, the
retention in the cabinet of a person like Lord Thurlow, whose views of
the Constitution were all through the wrong end of the telescope, and
who did not even affect to conceal his hostility to the principles of
his colleagues, seemed such a provision, at starting, for the
embarrassment of the Ministry, as gave but very little hope of its union
or stability.
The only Speech, of which any record remains as having been delivered by
Mr. Sheridan during his short official career, was upon a motion made by
Mr. Eden, the late Secretary for Ireland, "to repeal so much of the act
of George I. as asserted a right in the King and Parliament of Great
Britain to make laws to bind the Kingdom of Ireland." This motion was
intended to perplex the new ministers, who, it was evident from the
speech of Mr. Fox on the subject, had not yet made up their minds to
that surrender of the Legislative Supremacy of Great Britain, which
Ireland now, with arms in her hands, demanded. [Footnote: Mr. Fox, in
his speech upon the Commercial Propositions of 1785, acknowledged the
reluctance that was felt at this period, in surrendering the power of
external or commercial legislation over Ireland:--"a power," he said,
"which, in their struggles for independence, the Irish had imprudently
insisted on having abolished, and which he had himself given up in
compliance with the strong prejudices of that nation, though with a
reluctance that nothing but irresistible necessity could overcome."] Mr.
Sheridan concurred with the Honorable Secretary in deprecating such a
hasty and insidious agitation of the question, but at the same time
expressed in a much more unhesitating manner, his opinion of that Law of
Subjection from which Ireland now rose to release herself:--
"If he declared himself (he said) so decided an enemy to the principle
of the Declaratory Law in question, which he had always regarded as a
tyrannous usurpation in this country, he yet could not but reprobate the
motives which influenced the present mover for its repeal--but, if the
house divided on it, he should vote with him."
The general sense of the House being against the motion, it was
withdrawn. But the spirit of the Irish nation had advanced too far on
its march to be called back even by the most friendly voice. All that
now remained for the ministers was to yield, with a confiding frankness,
what the rash measures of their predecessors and the weakness of England
had put it out of their power with safety to refuse. This policy, so
congenial to the disposition of Mr. Fox, was adopted. His momentary
hesitation was succeeded by such a prompt and generous acquiescence in
the full demands of the Irish Parliament, as gave all the grace of a
favor to what necessity would, at all events, have extorted--and, in
the spirited assertion of the rights of freemen on one side, and the
cordial and entire recognition of them on the other, the names of
Grattan and Fox, in that memorable moment, reflected a lustre on each
other which associates them in its glory for ever.
Another occasion upon which Mr. Sheridan spoke while in office,--though
no report of his Speech has been preserved--was a motion for a Committee
to examine into the State of the Representation, brought forward by the
youthful reformer, Mr. William Pitt, whose zeal in the cause of freedom
was at that time, perhaps, sincere, and who little dreamed of the war he
was destined to wage with it afterwards. Mr. Fox and Mr. Sheridan spoke
strongly in favor of the motion, while, in compliance with the request
of the former, Mr. Burke absented himself from the discussion--giving
the cause of Reform, for once, a respite from the thunders of his
eloquence, like the sleep of Jove, in Homer, which leaves the Greeks for
the moment masters of the field.
[Greek]_Sphin chndos opaze, minuntha per, ophr'eati endei
Zeus.
[Footnote: "And, while the moment lasts of Jove's repose, Make victory
theirs." COWPER.]
Notwithstanding all this, however, the question was lost by a majority
of 161 to 141.
Immediately on his accession to office, Mr. Sheridan received the
following letter from his brother Charles Francis, who had been called
to the Irish bar in 1778 or 9, but was at this time practising as a
Special Pleader:--
"Dublin, March 27, 1782.
"DEAR DICK,
"I am much obliged to you for your early intelligence concerning the
fate of the Ministry, and give you joy on the occasion, notwithstanding
your sorrow for the departure of the good Opposition. I understand very
well what you mean by this sorrow--but as you may be now in a situation
in which you may obtain some substantial advantage for yourself, for
God's sake improve the opportunity to the utmost, and don't let dreams
of empty fame (of which you have had enough in conscience) carry you
away from your solid interests.
"I return you many thanks for Fox's letter. I mean for your intention to
make him write one--for as your good intentions always satisfy your
conscience, and that you seem to think the carrying them into execution
to be a mere trifling ceremony, as well omitted as not, your friends
must always take the _will_ for the _deed_. I will forgive
you, however, on condition that you will for once in your life consider
that though the _will_ alone may perfectly satisfy yourself, your
friends would be a little more, gratified if they were sometimes to see
it accompanied by the deed--and let me be the first upon whom you try
the experiment If the people here are not to share the fate of their
patrons, but are suffered to continue in the government of this country,
I believe you will have it in your power, as I am certain it will be in
your inclination, to fortify my claims upon them by recommendations from
your side of the water, in such a manner as to insure to me what I have
a right to expect from them, but of which I can have no certainty
without that assistance. I wish the present people may continue here,
because I certainly have claims upon them, and considering the footing
that Lord C--- and Charles Fox are on, a recommendation from the latter
would now have every weight,--it would be drawing a bill upon Government
here, payable at sight, which they dare not protest. So, dear Dick, I
shall rely upon you that will _really_ be done: and, to confess the
truth, unless it be done, and that speedily, I shall be completely
ruined, for this damned annuity, payable to my uncle, plays the devil
with me. If there is any intention of recalling the people here, I beg
you will let me know it as soon as possible, that I may take my measures
accordingly,--and I think I may rely upon you also that whoever comes
over here as Lord L----t, I shall not be forgot among the number of
those who shall be recommended to them.
"As to our politics here, I send you a newspaper,--read the resolutions
of the volunteers, and you will be enabled to form some idea of the
spirit which at present pervades this country. A declaration of the
independency of our Parliament upon yours will _certainly_ pass our
House of Commons immediately after the recess; government here dare not,
cannot oppose it; you will see the volunteers have pledged their lives
and fortunes in support of the measure. The grand juries of every county
have followed their example, and some of the staunchest friends of
government have been, much against their inclinations, compelled to sign
the most spirited Resolutions.
"A call of the House is ordered for the first Tuesday after the recess,
and circular letters from the Speaker worded in this remarkable manner,
"that the members do attend on that day as _they tender the rights of
Ireland_." In short, nothing will satisfy the people but the most
unequivocal assertion of the total independence of the Irish
legislature. This flame has been raised within this six weeks, and is
entirely owing either to the insidious design or unpardonable
inattention of the late administration, in including, or suffering to be
included, the name of Ireland in no less than five British statutes
passed last sessions. People here were ignorant of this till Grattan
produced the five Acts to the House of Commons, one of which Eden had
been so imprudent as to publish in the Dublin gazette. Previous to this
the general sense of the country was, that the mere question of right
should be suffered to sleep, provided the _exercise_ of the power
claimed under it should never again be resorted to in a single instance.
"The sooner you repeal the 6th of G. I. the better; for, believe me,
nothing short of that can now preserve union and cordiality between the
two countries.
"I hope my father and you are very good friends by this. I shall not be
able to send you the remaining 50_l_. till October, as I have been
disappointed as to the time of payment of the money I expected to
receive this month. Let me entreat you to write to me shortly a few
words. I beg my love to Mrs. S. and Tom.
"I am, dear Dick,
"Your very affectionate brother,
"C. F. SHERIDAN."
The expectations of the writer of this letter were not disappointed. The
influence of Mr. Sheridan, added to his own claims, procured for him the
office of Secretary of War in Ireland,--a situation, which the greater
pliancy of his political principles contrived to render a more permanent
benefit to him than any that his Whig brother was ever able to secure
for himself.
The death of the Marquis of Rockingham broke up this shortlived
Ministry, which, during the four months of its existence, did more
perhaps for the principles of the Constitution, than any one
administration that England had seen since the Revolution. They were
betrayed, it is true, into a few awkward overflowings of loyalty, which
the rare access of Whigs to the throne may at once account for and
excuse:--and Burke, in particular, has left us a specimen of his taste
for extremes, in that burst of optimism with which he described the
King's message, as "the best of messages to the best of people from the
best of kings." But these first effects of the atmosphere of a court,
upon heads unaccustomed to it, are natural and harmless--while the
measures that passed during that brief interval, directed against the
sources of Parliamentary corruption, and confirmatory of the best
principles of the Constitution, must ever be remembered to the honor of
the party from which they emanated. The exclusion of contractors from
the House of Commons--the disqualification of revenue-officers from
voting at elections--the disfranchisement of corrupt voters at
Cricklade, by which a second precedent [Footnote: The first was that of
the borough of Shoreham in 1771.] was furnished towards that plan of
gradual Reform, which has, in our own time, been so forcibly recommended
by Lord John Russell--the diminution of the patronage of the Crown, by
Mr. Burke's celebrated Bill [Footnote: This Bill, though its circle of
retrenchment was, as might be expected, considerably narrowed, when the
Treasury Bench became the centre from which he described it, was yet
eminently useful, as an acknowledgment from ministerial authority of the
necessity of such occasional curtailments of the Royal influence.]--the
return to the old constitutional practice [Footnote: First departed from
in 1769. See Burke's powerful exposure of the mischiefs of this
innovation, in his "Thoughts on the Causes of the present Discontents."]
of making the revenues of the Crown pay off their own incumbrances,
which salutary principle was again lost in the hands of Mr. Pitt--the
atonement at last made to the violated rights of electors, by the
rescinding of the Resolutions relative to Wilkes--the frank and cordial
understanding entered into with Ireland, which identifies the memory of
Mr. Fox and this ministry with the only _oasis_ in the whole desert
of Irish history--so many and such important recognitions of the best
principles of Whiggism, followed up, as they were, by the Resolutions of
Lord John Cavendish at the close of the Session, pledging the ministers
to a perseverance in the same task of purification and retrenchment,
give an aspect to this short period of the annals of the late reign, to
which the eye turns for relief from the arbitrary complexion of the
rest; and furnish us with, at least, _one_ consoling instance,
where the principles professed by statesmen, when in opposition, were
retained and sincerely acted upon by them in power.
On the death of the Marquis of Rockingham, Lord Shelburne, without, as
it appears, consulting any of the persons attached to that nobleman,
accepted the office of first Lord of the Treasury; in consequence of
which Mr. Fox, and the greater number of his friends--among whom were
Mr. Burke and Mr. Sheridan--sent in their resignations; while General
Conway, the Duke of Richmond, and one or two other old allies of the
party, remained in office.
To a disposition so social as that of Mr. Fox, the frequent interruption
and even loss of friendships, which he had to sustain in the course of
his political career, must have been a sad alloy to its pleasure and its
pride. The fable of the sheep that leaves its fleece on the bramble bush
is but too apt an illustration of the fate of him, who thus sees himself
stripped of the comforts of friendship by the tenacious and thorny hold
of politics. On the present occasion, however, the desertion of his
standard by a few who had followed him cordially in his ascent to power,
but did not show the same alacrity in accompanying his voluntary fall,
was amply made up to him by the ready devotion, with which the rest of
the party shared his fortunes. The disinterestedness of Sheridan was the
more meritorious, if, as there is every reason to believe, he considered
the step of resignation at such a moment to be, at least, hasty, if not
wholly wrong. In this light it was, indeed, viewed by many judicious
persons at the time, and the assurances given by the Duke of Richmond
and General Conway, of the continued adherence of the cabinet to the
same principles and measures, to which they were pledged at the first
formation of the ministry, would seem to confirm the justice of the
opinion. So much temper, however, had, during the few months of their
union, been fermenting between the two great masses of which the
administration was composed, that it would have been difficult, if not
impossible, for the Rockingham party to rally, with any cordiality,
round Lord Shelburne, as a leader--however they might still have been
contented to co-operate with him, had he remained in the humble station
which he himself had originally selected. That noble Lord, too, who felt
that the sacrifice which he had considerately made, in giving up the
supremacy of station to Lord Rockingham, had, so far from being duly
appreciated by his colleagues, been repaid only with increased
alienation and distrust, could hardly be expected to make a second
surrender of his advantages, in favor of persons who had, he thought, so
ungraciously requited him for the first. In the mean time the Court, to
which the Rockingham party was odious, had, with its usual policy,
hollowed the ground beneath them, so as to render their footing neither
agreeable nor safe. The favorite object in that quarter being to compose
a ministry of those convenient ingredients, called "King's friends,"
Lord Shelburne was but made use of as a temporary instrument, to clear
away, in the first plane, the chief obstacles to such an arrangement,
and then, in his turn, be sacrificed himself, as soon as a more
subservient system could be organized. It was, indeed, only upon a
strong representation from his Lordship of the impossibility of carrying
on his government against such an Opposition, without the infusion of
fresh and popular talent, that the royal consent was obtained to the
appointment of Mr. Pitt--the memory of whose uncompromising father, as
well as the first achievements on his own youthful shield, rendered him
no very promising accession to such a scheme of government, as was
evidently then contemplated by the Court.
In this state of affairs, the resignation of Mr. Fox and his friends was
but a prompt and spirited anticipation of what must inevitably have
taken place, under circumstances much less redounding to the credit of
their independence and disinterestedness. There is little doubt, indeed,
that with the great majority of the nation, Mr. Fox by this step
considerably added to his popularity--and, if we were desired to point
out the meridian moment of his fame, we should fix it perhaps at this
splendid epoch, before the ill-fated Coalition had damped the confidence
of his friends, or the ascendancy of his great rival had multiplied the
number of his enemies.
There is an anecdote of Mr. Burke, connected with this period, the
credibility of which must be left to the reader's own judgment. It is
said that, immediately upon the retirement of Mr. Fox, while Lord John
Cavendish (whose resignation was for a short time delayed by the
despatch of some official business) was still a minister, Mr. Burke,
with a retrospect to the sweets of office which showed that he had not
wholly left hope behind, endeavored to open a negotiation through the
medium of Lord John, for the purpose of procuring, by some arrangement,
either for himself or his son, a Tellership then in the possession of a
relative of Lord Orford. It is but fair to add that this curious
anecdote rests chiefly upon the authority of the latter nobleman.
[Footnote: Unpublished Papers.] The degree of faith it receives will,
therefore, depend upon the balance that may be struck in our comparative
estimate between the disinterestedness of Burke and the veracity of Lord
Orford.
At the commencement of the following session that extraordinary
Coalition was declared, which had the ill-luck attributed to the
conjunction of certain planets, and has shed an unfavorable influence
over the political world ever since. Little is, I believe, known of the
private negotiations that led to this ill-assorted union of parties;
but, from whichever side the first advances may have come, the affair
seems to have been dispatched with the rapidity of a Siamese courtship;
and while to Mr. Eden (afterwards Lord Auckland) is attributed the
credit of having gained Lord North's consent to the union, Mr. Burke is
generally supposed to have been the person, who sung the "Hymen, oh
Hymenae" in the ears of Mr. Fox.
With that sagacity, which in general directed his political views, Mr.
Sheridan foresaw all the consequences of such a defiance of public
opinion, and exerted, it is said, the whole power of his persuasion and
reasoning, to turn aside his sanguine and uncalculating friend from a
measure so likely to embarrass his future career. Unfortunately,
however, the advice was not taken,--and a person, who witnessed the
close of a conversation, in which Sheridan had been making a last effort
to convince Mr. Fox of the imprudence of the step he was about to take,
heard the latter, at parting, express his final resolution in the
following decisive words:--"It is as fixed as the Hanover succession."
To the general principle of Coalitions, and the expediency and even duty
of forming them, in conjunctures that require and justify such a
sacrifice of the distinctions of party, no objection, it appears to me,
can rationally be made by those who are satisfied with the manner in
which the Constitution has worked, since the new modification of its
machinery introduced at the Revolution. The Revolution itself was,
indeed, brought about by a Coalition, in which Tories, surrendering
their doctrines of submission, arrayed themselves by the side of Whigs,
in defence of their common liberties. Another Coalition, less important
in its object and effects, but still attended with results most glorious
to the country, was that which took place in the year 1757, when, by a
union of parties from whose dissension much mischief had flowed, the
interests of both king and people were reconciled, and the good genius
of England triumphed at home and abroad.
On occasions like these, when the public liberty or safety is in peril,
it is the duty of every honest statesman to say, with the Roman, "_Non
me impedient privatae offensiones, quo minus pro reipublicae salute
etian cum inimicissimo consentiam._" Such cases, however, but rarely
occur; and they have been in this respect, among others, distinguished
from the ordinary occasions, on which the ambition or selfishness of
politicians resorts to such unions, that the voice of the people has
called aloud for them in the name of the public weal; and that the cause
round which they have rallied has been sufficiently general, to merge
all party titles in the one undistinguishing name of Englishman. By
neither of these tests can the junction between Lord North and Mr. Fox
be justified. The people at large, so far from calling for this ill-
omened alliance, would on the contrary--to use the language of Mr. Pitt
--have "forbid the banns;" and though it is unfair to suppose that the
interests of the public did not enter into the calculations of the
united leaders, yet, if the real watchword of their union were to be
demanded of them in "the Palace of Truth," there can be little doubt
that the answer of each would be, distinctly and unhesitatingly,
"Ambition."
One of the most specious allegations in defence of the measure is, that
the extraordinary favor which Lord Shelburne enjoyed at court, and the
arbitrary tendencies known to prevail in that quarter, portended just
then such an overflow of Royal influence, as it was necessary to
counteract by this double embankment of party. In the first place,
however, it is by no means so certain that the noble minister at this
period did actually enjoy such favor. On the contrary, there is every
reason to believe that his possession of the Royal confidence did not
long survive that important service, to which he was made instrumental,
of clearing the cabinet of the Whigs; and that, like the bees of Virgil,
he had left the soul of his own power in the wound which he had been the
means of inflicting upon that of others. In the second place, whatever
might have been the designs of the Court,--and of its encroaching spirit
no doubt can be entertained,--Lord Shelburne had assuredly given no
grounds for apprehending, that he would ever, like one of the chiefs of
this combination against him, be brought to lend himself precipitately
or mischievously to its views. Though differing from Mr. Fox on some
important points of policy, and following the example of his friend,
Lord Chatham, in keeping himself independent of Whig confederacies, he
was not the less attached to the true principles of that party, and,
throughout his whole political career, invariably maintained them. This
argument, therefore,--the only plausible one in defence of the
Coalition,--fails in the two chief assumptions on which it is founded.
It has been truly said of Coalitions, considered abstractedly, that such
a union of parties, when the public good requires it, is to be justified
on the same grounds on which party itself is vindicated. But the more we
feel inclined to acknowledge the utility of party, the more we must
dread and deprecate any unnecessary compromise, by which a suspicion of
unsoundness may be brought upon the agency of so useful a principle--the
more we should discourage, as a matter of policy, any facility in
surrendering those badges of opinion, on which the eyes of followers are
fondly fixed, and by which their confidence and spirit are chiefly kept
alive--the more, too, we must lament that a great popular leader, like
Mr. Fox, should ever have lightly concurred in such a confusion of the
boundaries of opinion, and, like that mighty river, the Mississippi,
whose waters lose their own color in mixing with those of the Missouri,
have sacrificed the distinctive hue of his own political creed, to this
confluence of interests with a party so totally opposed to it.
"Court and country," says Hume, [Footnote: Essay "on the Parties of
Great Britain."] "which are the genuine offspring of the British
government, are a kind of mixed parties, and are influenced both by
principle and by interest. The heads of the factions are commonly most
governed by the latter motive; the inferior members of them by the
former." Whether this be altogether true or not, it will, at least,
without much difficulty be conceded, that the lower we descend in the
atmosphere of party, the more quick and inflammable we find the feeling
that circulates through it. Accordingly, actions and professions, which,
in that region of indifference, high life, may be forgotten as soon as
done or uttered, become recorded as pledges and standards of conduct,
among the lower and more earnest adherents of the cause; and many a
question, that has ceased to furnish even a jest in the drawing-rooms of
the great, may be still agitated, as of vital importance, among the
humbler and less initiated disputants of the party. Such being the
tenacious nature of partisanship, and such the watch kept upon every
movement of the higher political bodies, we can well imagine what a
portent it must appear to distant and unprepared observers, when the
stars to which they trusted for guidance are seen to "shoot madly from
their spheres," and not only lose themselves for the time in another
system, but unsettle all calculations with respect to their movements
for the future.
The steps by which, in general, the principles in such transactions are
gradually reconciled to their own inconsistency--the negotiations that
precede and soften down the most salient difficulties--the value of the
advantages gained, in return for opinions sacrificed--the new points of
contact brought out by a change of circumstances, and the abatement or
extinction of former differences, by the remission or removal of the
causes that provoked them,--all these conciliatory gradations and
balancing adjustments, which to those who are in the secret may account
for, and more or less justify, the alliance of statesmen who differ in
their general views of politics, are with difficulty, if at all, to be
explained to the remote multitude of the party, whose habit it is to
judge and feel in the gross, and who, as in the case of Lord North and
Mr. Fox, can see only the broad and but too intelligible fact, that the
leaders for whom both parties had sacrificed so much--those on one side
their interest, and those on the other, perhaps, their consciences--had
deserted them to patch up a suspicious alliance with each other, the
only open and visible motive to which was the spoil that it enabled them
to partition between them.
If, indeed, in that barter of opinions and interests, which must
necessarily take place in Coalitions between the partisans of the People
and of the Throne, the former had any thing like an equality of chance,
the mere probability of gaining thus any concessions in favor of freedom
might justify to sanguine minds the occasional risk of the compromise.
But it is evident that the result of such bargains must generally be to
the advantage of the Crown--the alluvions of power all naturally tend
towards that shore. Besides, where there are places as well as
principles to be surrendered on one side, there must in return be so
much more of principles given up on the other, as will constitute an
equivalent to this double sacrifice. The centre of gravity will be sure
to lie in that body, which contains within it the source of emoluments
and honors, and the other will be forced to revolve implicitly round it.
The only occasion at this period on which Mr. Sheridan seems to have
alluded to the Coalition, was during a speech of some length on the
consideration of the Preliminary Articles of Peace. Finding himself
obliged to advert to the subject, he chose rather to recriminate on the
opposite party for the anomaly of their own alliances, than to vindicate
that which his distinguished friend had just formed, and which, in his
heart, as has been already stated, he wholly disapproved. The
inconsistency of the Tory Lord Advocate (Dundas) in connecting himself
with the patron of Equal Representation, Mr. Pitt, and his support of
that full recognition of American independence, against which, under the
banners of Lord North, he had so obstinately combated, afforded to
Sheridan's powers of raillery an opportunity of display, of which, there
is no doubt, he with his accustomed felicity availed himself. The
reporter of the speech, however, has, as usual, contrived, with an art
near akin to that of reducing diamonds to charcoal, to turn all the
brilliancy of his wit into dull and opake verbiage.
It was during this same debate, that he produced that happy retort upon
Mr. Pitt, which, for good-humored point and seasonableness, has seldom,
if ever, been equalled.
"Mr. Pitt (say the Parliamentary Reports) was pointedly severe on the
gentlemen who had spoken against the Address, and particularly on Mr.
Sheridan. 'No man admired more than he did the abilities of that Right
Honorable Gentleman, the elegant sallies of his thought, the gay
effusions of his fancy, his dramatic turns and his epigrammatic point;
and if they were reserved for the proper stage, they would, no doubt,
receive what the Honorable Gentleman's abilities always did receive, the
plaudits of the audience; and it would be his fortune "_sui plausu
gaudere theatri_." But this was not the proper scene for the
exhibition of those elegancies.' Mr. Sheridan, in rising to explain,
said that 'On the particular sort of personality which the Right
Honorable Gentleman had thought proper to make use of, he need not make
any comment. The propriety, the taste, the gentlemanly point of it, must
have been obvious to the House. But, said Mr. Sheridan, let me assure
the Right Honorable gentleman, that I do now, and will at any time he
chooses to repeat this sort of allusion, meet it with the most sincere
good-humor. Nay, I will say more--flattered and encouraged by the Right
Honorable Gentleman's panegyric on my talents, if ever I again engage in
the compositions he alludes to, I maybe tempted to an act of
presumption--to attempt an improvement on one of Ben Jonson's best
characters, the character of the Angry Boy in the Alchymist.'"
Mr. Sheridan's connection with the stage, though one of the most
permanent sources of his glory, was also a point, upon which, at the
commencement of his political career, his pride was most easily awakened
and alarmed. He, himself, used to tell of the frequent mortifications
which he had suffered, when at school, from taunting allusions to his
father's profession--being called by some of his school-fellows "the
player-boy," &c. Mr. Pitt had therefore selected the most sensitive spot
for his sarcasm; and the good temper as well as keenness, with which the
thrust was returned, must have been felt even through all that pride of
youth and talent, in which the new Chancellor of the Exchequer was then
enveloped. There could hardly, indeed, have been a much greater service
rendered to a person in the situation of Mr. Sheridan, than thus
affording him an opportunity of silencing, once for all, a battery to
which this weak point of his pride was exposed, and by which he might
otherwise have been kept in continual alarm. This gentlemanlike retort,
combined with the recollection of his duel, tended to place him for the
future in perfect security against any indiscreet tamperings with his
personal history. [Footnote: The following _jeu d'esprit_, written
by Sheridan himself upon this occurrence, has been found among his
manuscripts:--
"ADVERTISEMENT EXTRAORDINARY.
"We hear that, in consequence of a hint, lately given in the House of
Commons, the Play of the Alchemist is certainly to be performed by a set
of Gentlemen for our diversion in a private apartment of Buckingham
House.
"The Characters, thus described in the old editions of Ben Jonson, are
to be represented in the following manner--the old practice of men's
playing the female parts being adopted.
"SUBTLE (_the Alchemist_) Lord Sh--Ib--e.
FACE (_the House-keeper_) The Lord Ch--ll--r.
DOLL COMMON (_their Colleague_) The L--d Adv--c--te.
DRUGGER (_a Tobacco-man_) Lord Eff--ng--m.
EPICURE MAMMON Mr. R--by.
TRIBULATION Dr. J--nk--s--n.
ANANIAS (_a little Pastor_) Mr. H--ll.
KASTRILL (_the Angry Boy_) Mr. W. P--tt.
DAME PLIANT Gen. C--nw--y.
and
SURLY His ------"]
In the administration, that was now forced upon the court by the
Coalition, Mr. Sheridan held the office of Secretary of the Treasury--
the other Secretary being Mr. Richard Burke, the brother of the orator.
His exertions in the House, while he held this office, were chiefly
confined to financial subjects, for which he, perhaps, at this time,
acquired the taste, that tempted him afterwards, upon most occasions, to
bring his arithmetic into the field against Mr. Pitt. His defence of the
Receipt Tax,--which, like all other long-lived taxes, was born with
difficulty,--appears, as far as we can judge of it from the Report, to
have been highly amusing. Some country-gentleman having recommended a
tax upon grave-stones as a substitute for it, Sheridan replied that:
"Such a tax, indeed, was not easily evaded, and could not be deemed
oppressive, as it would only be once paid; but so great was the spirit
of clamor against the tax on receipts, that he should not wonder if it
extended to them; and that it should be asserted, that persons having
paid the last debt,--the debt of nature,--government had resolved they
should pay a receipt-tax, and have it stamped over their grave. Nay,
with so extraordinary a degree of inveteracy were some Committees in the
city, and elsewhere, actuated, that if a receipt-tax of the nature in
question was enacted, he should not be greatly surprised if it were soon
after published, that such Committees had unanimously resolved that they
would never be buried, in order to avoid paying the tax; but had
determined to lie above ground, or have their ashes consigned to family-
urns, in the manner of the ancients."
He also took an active share in the discussions relative to the
restoration of Powell and Bembridge to their offices by Mr. Burke:--a
transaction which, without fixing any direct stigma upon that eminent
man, subjected him, at least, to the unlucky suspicion of being less
scrupulous in his notions of official purity, than became the party
which he espoused or the principles of Reform that he inculcated.
Little as the Court was disposed, during the late reign, to retain Whigs
in its service any longer than was absolutely necessary, it must be
owned that neither did the latter, in general, take very courtier-like
modes of continuing their connection with Royalty; but rather chose to
meet the hostility of the Crown half-way, by some overt act of
imprudence or courage, which at once brought the matter to an issue
between them. Of this hardihood the India Bill of Mr. Fox was a
remarkable example--and he was himself fully aware of the risk which he
ran in proposing it. "He knew," he said, in his speech upon first
bringing forward the question, "that the task he had that day set
himself was extremely arduous and difficult; he knew that he had
considerable risk in it; but when he took upon himself an office of
responsibility, he had made up his mind to the situation and the danger
of it."
Without agreeing with those who impute to Mr. Fox the extravagant design
of investing himself, by means of this Bill, with a sort of perpetual
Whig Dictatorship, independent of the will of the Crown, it must
nevertheless be allowed that, together with the interests of India,
which were the main object of this decisive measure, the future
interests and influence of his own party were in no small degree
provided for; and that a foundation was laid by it for their attainment
of a more steady footing in power than, from the indisposition of the
Court towards them, they had yet been able to accomplish. Regarding--as
he well might, after so long an experience of Tory misrule--a government
upon Whig principles as essential to the true interests of England, and
hopeless of seeing the experiment at all fairly tried, as long as the
political existence of the servants of the Crown was left dependent upon
the caprice or treachery of their master, he would naturally welcome
such an accession to the influence of the party as might strengthen
their claims to power when out of office, and render their possession of
it, when in, more secure and useful. These objects the Bill in question
would have, no doubt, effected. By turning the Pactolus of Indian
patronage into the territories of Whiggism, it would have attracted new
swarms of settlers to that region,--the Court would have found itself
outbid in the market,--and, however the principles of the party might
eventually have fared, the party itself would have been so far
triumphant. It was indeed, probably, the despair of ever obtaining
admission for Whiggism, in its unalloyed state, into the councils of the
Sovereign, that reconciled Mr. Fox to the rash step of debasing it down
to the Court standard by the Coalition--and, having once gained
possession of power by these means, he saw, in the splendid provisions
of the India Bill, a chance of being able to transmit it as an heir-loom
to his party, which, though conscious of the hazard, he was determined
to try. If his intention, therefore, was, as his enemies say, to
establish a Dictatorship in his own person, it was, at the worst, such a
Dictatorship as the Romans sometimes created, for the purpose of
averting the plague--and would have been directed merely against that
pestilence of Toryism, under which the prosperity of England had, he
thought, languished so long.
It was hardly, however, to be expected of Royalty,--even after the
double humiliation which it had suffered, in being vanquished by rebels
under one branch of the Coalition, and browbeaten into acknowledging
their independence by the other--that it would tamely submit to such an
undisguised invasion of its sanctuary; particularly when the intruders
had contrived their operations so ill, as to array the people in
hostility against them, as well as the Throne. Never was there an outcry
against a ministry so general and decisive. Dismissed insultingly by the
King on one side, they had to encounter the indignation of the people on
the other; and, though the House of Commons, with a fidelity to fallen
ministers sufficiently rare, stood by them for a time in a desperate
struggle with their successors, the voice of the Royal Prerogative, like
the horn of Astolpho, soon scattered the whole body in consternation
among their constituents, _"di qua, di la, di su, di giu,"_ and the
result was a complete and long-enjoyed triumph to the Throne and Mr.
Pitt.
Though the name of Mr. Fox is indissolubly connected with this Bill, and
though he bore it aloft, as fondly as Caesar did his own Commentaries,
through all this troubled sea of opposition, it is to Mr. Burke that the
first daring outline of the plan, as well as the chief materials for
filling it up, are to be attributed,--whilst to Sir Arthur Pigot's able
hand was entrusted the legal task of drawing the Bill. The intense
interest which Burke took in the affairs of India had led him to lay in
such stores of information on the subject, as naturally gave him the
lead in all deliberations connected with it. His labors for the Select
Committee, the Ninth Report of which is pregnant with his mighty mind,
may be considered as the source and foundation of this Bill--while of
the under-plot, which had in view the strengthening of the Whig
interest, we find the germ in his "Thoughts on the present Discontents,"
where, in pointing out the advantage to England of being ruled by such a
confederacy, he says, "In one of the most fortunate periods of our
history, this country was governed by a connection; I mean the great
connection of Whigs in the reign of Queen Anne."
Burke was, indeed, at this time the actuating spirit of the party--as he
must have been of any party to which he attached himself. Keeping, as he
did, the double engines of his genius and his industry incessantly in
play over the minds of his more indolent colleagues, with an intentness
of purpose that nothing could divert, and an impetuosity of temper that
nothing could resist, it is not wonderful that he should have gained
such an entire mastery over their wills, or that the party who obeyed
him should so long have exhibited the mark of his rash spirit imprinted
upon their measures. The yielding temper of Mr. Fox, together with his
unbounded admiration of Burke, led him easily, in the first instance, to
acquiesce in the views of his friend, and then the ardor of his own
nature, and the self-kindling power of his eloquence, threw an
earnestness and fire into his public enforcement of those views, which
made even himself forget that they were but adopted from another, and
impressed upon his hearers the conviction that they were all, and from
the first, his own.
We read his speeches in defence of the India Bill with a sort of
breathless anxiety, which no other political discourses, except those,
perhaps, of Demosthenes, could produce. The importance of the stake
which he risks--the boldness of his plan--the gallantry with which he
flings himself into the struggle, and the frankness of personal feeling
that breathes throughout--all throw around him an interest, like that
which encircles a hero of romance; nor could the most candid
autobiography that ever was written exhibit the whole character of the
man more transparently through it.
The death of this ill-fated Ministry was worthy of its birth.
Originating in a Coalition of Whigs and Tories, which compromised the
_principles_ of freedom, it was destroyed by a Coalition of King
and People, which is even, perhaps, more dangerous to its
_practice_. [Footnote: "This assumption (says Burke) of the
Tribunitian power by the Sovereign was truly alarming. When Augustus
Caesar modestly consented to become the Tribune of the people, Rome gave
up into the hands of that prince the only remaining shield she had to
protect her liberty. The Tribunitian power in this country, as in
ancient Rome, was wisely kept distinct and separate from the executive
power; in this government it was constitutionally lodged where it was
naturally to be lodged, in the House of Commons; and to that House the
people ought first to carry their complaints, even when they were
directed against the measures of the House itself. But now the people
were taught to pass by the door of the House of Commons and supplicate
the Throne for the protection of their liberties."--_Speech on moving
his Representation to the King, in June_, 1784.]
The conduct, indeed, of all estates and parties, during this short
interval, was any thing but laudable. The leaven of the unlucky alliance
with Lord North was but too visible in many of the measures of the
Ministry--in the jobbing terms of the loan, the resistance to Mr. Pitt's
plan of retrenchment, and the diminished numbers on the side of
Parliamentary Reform. [Footnote: The consequences of this alloy were
still more visible in Ireland. "The Coalition Ministry," says Mr. Hardy,
"displayed itself in various employments--but there was no harmony. The
old courtiers hated the new, and being more dexterous, were more
successful." In stating that Lord Charlemont was but coldly received by
the Lord Lieutenant, Lord Northington, Mr. Hardy adds, "It is to be
presumed that some of the old Court, who in consequence of the Coalition
had crept once more into favor, influenced his conduct in this
particular."] On the other hand, Mr. Pitt and his party, in their
eagerness for place, did not hesitate to avail themselves of the
ambidexterous and unworthy trick of representing the India Bill to the
people, as a Tory plan for the increase of Royal influence, and to the
King, as a Whig conspiracy for the curtailment of it. The King himself,
in his arbitrary interference with the deliberations of the Lords, and
the Lords, in the prompt servility with which so many of them obeyed his
bidding, gave specimens of their respective branches of the
Constitution, by no means creditable--while finally the people, by the
unanimous outcry with which they rose, in defence of the monopoly of
Leadenhall Street and the sovereign will of the Court, proved how little
of the "_vox Dei_" there may sometimes be in such clamor.
Mr. Sheridan seems to have spoken but once during the discussions on the
India Bill, and that was on the third reading, when it was carried so
triumphantly through the House of Commons. The report of his speech is
introduced with the usual tantalizing epithets, "witty," "entertaining,"
&c. &c.; but, as usual, entails disappointment in the perusal--"_at
cum intraveris, Dii Deceque, quam nihil in medio invenies!_"
[Footnote: Pliny] There is only one of the announced pleasantries
forthcoming, in any shape, through the speech. Mr. Scott (the present
Lord Eldon) had, in the course of the debate, indulged in a license of
Scriptural parody, which he would himself, no doubt, be among the first
to stigmatize as blasphemy in others, and had affected to discover the
rudiments of the India Bill in a Chapter of the Book of Revelations,--
Babylon being the East India Company, Mr. Fox and his seven
Commissioners the Beast with the seven heads, and the marks on the hand
and forehead, imprinted by the Beast upon those around him, meaning,
evidently, he said, the peerages, pensions, and places distributed by
the minister. In answering this strange sally of forensic wit, Mr.
Sheridan quoted other passages from the same Sacred Book, which (as the
Reporter gravely assures us) "told strongly for the Bill," and which
proved that Lord Fitz-william and his fellow-commissioners, instead of
being the seven heads of the Beast, were seven Angels "clothed in pure
and white linen!"