crime itself will be regarded with more indulgence by posterity
than any irregular mode of punishing it. Allowance for
individuals is made in all great changes. It is difficult in
sudden emergencies and great convulsions of State, especially
for professional men whose lives have been passed in camps, to
weigh maturely all the considerations by which their conduct
should, in the strict line of duty, be regulated. Unforeseen
cases occur, and men even of good principles and understanding
are hurried into acts of inconsistency and political
immorality. History is full of such instances, and in our own
the name of one, with whom Wellington himself cannot dislike
being associated, brings them to our recollection. Marlborough
abandoned, in his King, a benefactor and protector, betrayed
the person who placed great confidence in him, and did so when
the opinions of his friends and party were, to say the least,
divided, and not unanimous in favour of the step he took.
These men deserted a standard to which they were recently,
reluctantly, and barely reconciled; under which they were
regarded with suspicion by their Government, with hatred and
reproach by their fellow soldiers, and they went over to their
ancient companion in arms and victory—to one from whom they had
derived rank, property, character, and importance. They did
so, too, when all the military feeling of their country was
decidedly in unison with the cause they espoused. A stoic, a
philosopher, a man whose public principles are stronger than
his private affections, gratitude, or vanity, might perhaps
have acted otherwise, and from strict regard to his honour,
once given, have sacrificed his fortunes, his favour, and
popularity with those to whom he was obliged, to support a
cause in which he found himself engaged against his interests
and inclinations. I own, however (you will perhaps reckon me
lax for thinking so), that any military man who was to lay his
hand on his heart and say that he would have done so, would
give me a much higher opinion of his present prudence than of
his self-knowledge and candour.
In this latter view of the subject, I know I am somewhat
singular. Few at present make such allowances for the political
tergiversations of the Marshals, and many, more indulgent than
I am in their judgment of political apostasy in England, are
quite outrageous with Frenchmen for not acting with inflexible
principle in the most trying and difficult circumstances.
Some, however, among the most indignant at their crimes, yet
doubt the justice, policy, and safety of punishing them; and
more, especially among the moderate of all parties, think the
claim of the Capitulation conclusive, or if not quite so, of
a nature questionable enough to induce Wellington, for the
preservation of his own and the national character, to give
it the construction most favourable to the weaker party. My
opinion is of no importance, but it is so strong that I could
not resist expressing it to you, who have access to those
whose character is most interested in forming a sound one upon
this very important subject. I have not spoken of La Valette.
All my arguments apply in his favour as strongly as in Ney’s,
and surely he is not, as the other may be, any object of a
bystander’s indignation. He seems an honourable man throughout.
Yours ever truly,
VASSALL HOLLAND.
The above letter arrived too late. Marshal Ney had perished the day
before. Lord Kinnaird somewhat injudiciously showed the Duke of
Wellington the letter. The truths contained in it were probably by
that time, and have been since, very unpleasant to him. He affected
to take umbrage at a passage,[228] which he erroneously supposed was
intended to convey an imputation upon him as jealous or fearful of the
military superiority of Marshal Ney. When I met him two years afterwards
at Paris, he would not speak to me. This sort of distance continued,
till our common friend, General Alava,[229] persuaded us to renew the
slight intercourse which had formerly subsisted between us. We exchanged
visits; he dined with me, and subsequent differences in politics have not
interrupted the interchange of civility between us.
I remember him, though he is older than myself, at Eton. He was in no
way distinguished there. Soon afterwards, both in his regiment and in
Ireland, he was, perhaps from contrast with his elder brother, reckoned
below mediocrity. In Dublin Castle his companions treated him as a
good-humoured, insignificant youth; and in India he was thought to
require all Lord Wellesley’s affection and interest to screen him even
from disgrace.[230] It is said that the compliance or good nature of
Sir John Harris, on one occasion, procured him the peerage, which he
certainly owed exclusively to Lord Wellesley’s recommendation. That
warning, however, if it was as serious as it is represented, roused the
faculties of Arthur Wellesley. From that period he devoted himself to
business and his profession. He rose rapidly through the gradations of
a good officer and useful man of business to much consideration both in
the State and the Army. He showed great discretion, temper, and judgment
in defence of his brother against an impeachment in 1806, and in the
following year he was designated by Lord Grenville to command a large
expedition to Mexico. He soon afterwards began his career in Portugal.
My opinion of him was formed very early. He is not only a very capable
and useful, but he is a great, fortunate, and extraordinary man, both
in politics and in war. No one ever possessed greater dexterity in
adapting his means to his ends. His want of any remarkable exterior
accomplishments only renders this faculty more wonderful. It is possible
that his wisdom may not be of the most enlarged and comprehensive,
and certainly not of the most refined and delicate kind; but it is
so unerring on all great occasions that it partakes at least of the
character of genius. Then his apprehension is quick, his sagacity
marvellous, his application indefatigable, and his decision and courage
unfailing. Even his defects turn to account. A certain insensibility,
real or assumed, gives his judgment uninterrupted scope for its exertion;
and habitual carelessness and inaccuracy in language, disarming criticism
in public, has often procured him advantages in his private intercourse
with politicians, which are seldom supposed to be attainable but by
qualities of a more exceptionable character. It is, indeed, rare for a
man of sense, education, and spirit to be more destitute of taste, wit,
grace, or imagination. But he affects none of them, and is often humble
or adroit enough to profit by the allowance made for their absence. He
loves to display a knowledge of details, even when he possesses it very
imperfectly; but, in general, his conversation and manners have the
ineffable charm of unassuming simplicity. Though he is very close and his
designs quite impenetrable, he speaks of past transactions with great
readiness and ease, and has all the air of being frank and communicative.
He has not quick or delicate feelings, and generosity is not the chief
ingredient in his composition.
On the other hand, he has few bad passions, and can subdue them
effectually when his interests, or even his convenience, require it.
Good-humoured, however, as he seems in social life, he is said to be
often indifferent and even harsh to inferiors,[231] which, if true, is
a trait not rendered less unamiable by the proof which his demeanour
with equals affords, that he can control his dislikes, conceal his
chagrin, stifle his resentments, and command his temper when he chooses.
His vanity, I have sometimes thought, exceeds his ambition; for he has
occasionally seemed to prefer the appearance to the reality of doing
whatever he likes. Opinions and principles may possibly sit rather
loosely upon a soldier. Like his own warhorse, he may care little what
troops he leads or what cause he serves, so that _He_, richly caparisoned
in the front, be the chief pageant of the show and reap the benefit of
the victory and the grace of the triumph.
It must be also admitted that all public men who have an appetite for
power occasionally cede some portion of consistency and opinion, and
some predilections and connections, to expediency and success; but where
others have made one sacrifice of the sort, the Duke of Wellington seemed
at one time to lead whole hecatombs to the shrine. The cheerfulness
with which he went through that unpleasant ceremony created a malicious
inference that he did not value the State more, but political principles
and friendships somewhat less, than his predecessors and contemporaries.
His character was so interpreted during one period of his life, and
especially in 1828 and 1829, by many of his contemporaries. But the
subsequent publication of his correspondence, as well as his temperate
and measured conduct both in and out of office, have since proved that he
can sacrifice all selfish views and even his vanity and predilections to
public principles, and that although generosity is not supreme she is yet
not excluded from the mind where justice and prudence predominate.
He was not, at the time of which I am now treating, connected with the
purest or most stoical of public men. Lord Castlereagh perhaps never
entirely lost sight of certain good objects he had been taught to
value in his Whig or reforming days,[232] but he was at the best but a
temporising politician, and the unusual honours he had recently received
at Courts and in Congresses had almost turned his head. It required, to
use a metaphor of Mr. Frere, the strong currycomb of the House of Commons
to scrape off the lacquer with which he had been varnished at Vienna;
and there is reason to think that the rough discipline he experienced,
on his return, irritated and wounded him so much that he never recovered
his natural serenity of temper and that coolness of judgment which had
hitherto constituted the chief merit of his character. On his first
arrival from abroad the year before, incense such as he was accustomed
to in foreign Courts seemed reserved for him here. He was greeted by a
long and unusual cheer as he entered the House of Commons. But short
lived were such triumphs. The dread of the Property Tax[233] produced
innumerable petitions, and the indefatigable genius of Mr. Brougham,
who, through the influence of Lord Grey and Lord Thanet, had returned
to Parliament, allowed scarce one to be presented without an exposure
of the policy and a derision of the capacity of the Minister. House and
country were thus enflamed against that great act of confiscation, as it
was hyperbolically called in the publications of the day. The Bill was
rejected. The Minister, lowered as he was by his inferiority as an orator
and the defeat of his great financial measure, yet determined to maintain
his post.
Thus a Cabinet was continued, divided in sentiment on the great domestic
question of Catholic Emancipation and defeated by a House of Commons on
their favourite scheme of finance. Such a surrender of the functions of
a Ministry to a Court, combined with such an acknowledgment of their
want of authority in Parliament, effected practically a more violent
change in the nature of our Government than many measures which lawyers
and historians stigmatise as innovations. Whether the result will be
beneficial or injurious to the Commonwealth, time alone can show. It
would require no great ingenuity to trace many phenomena which have since
perplexed, and some which do still perplex, our political system, to that
original. But mine is a narrative and not a dissertation.
The fruits of that victory over Ministers, which had been gained in
a great measure by the exertions of Mr. Brougham, were thrown away
by the imprudence of that same powerful but unmanageable member of
Opposition. On some trivial occasion he launched out into an unseasonable
invective against the habits, expenses, and personal qualities of the
Prince Regent. This diatribe, deserved or undeserved, would, at all
times, have been too coarse for the taste of the assembly in which
it was delivered; and at that particular period it had the effect of
estranging many members, who had been recently softened towards the
Whigs by voting with them against the Property Tax. Mr. Ponsonby was
grieved, Mr. Tierney appalled, at the fresh instance of indiscretion.
It was the more unaccountable because Brougham had during that Session
evinced more disposition to concert with the party than he had affected
for some years. He had even resumed his habits with me, after an absence
from my house of six years, upon an understanding that he should be
received as if we had parted in the morning.[234] His jealousy of Mr.
Horner had somewhat abated. I should be loth to suspect that he had even
then detected the seeds of a disease which were to bring that excellent
man shortly to the grave, and that foreseeing the untimely removal of
his rival, he was willing to conciliate those whom he had avoided from
jealousy of an early friend.
Whatever were his secret motives or public extravagances, he, and still
more Sir Samuel Romilly, rose greatly in estimation as Parliamentary
speakers in the course of 1816. Lord Castlereagh, who had felt the want
of support, was not averse to secure it even in the person of one whom he
hated—Mr. Canning. That gentleman had submitted to be employed by him at
Lisbon in 1814, tempted, it was said, by large emoluments, and impelled
by the vexations which a discontented and precarious set of adherents
out of office created him at home.[235] He accepted, on his return, the
Board of Control. The selection of that place seemed to indicate that
neither he nor his employers thought constant or familiar intercourse any
very binding cement to their new connection. The Prince Regent also, in
all probability, preferred at that time an arrangement which required no
personal interviews between him and the new member of the Cabinet. Mr.
Canning had, indeed, advised the Princess of Wales to absent herself,
and that absence was agreeable enough to the Prince Regent; but the
circumstances which gave any advice from him to the Princess great weight
could not be equally so. I have myself heard the Prince Regent more than
insinuate causes for such ascendancy, which would not have led him to
anticipate much comfort or ease in any frequent intercourse with her
adviser.
No man was so well qualified as Mr. Canning to cope in debate with the
established as well as rising orators in Opposition. It was prudent,
therefore, in Lord Liverpool to suggest, and equally so in Lord
Castlereagh to acquiesce in, a junction which placed so brilliant a
speaker in the front of their battle; nor was it less so in Mr. Canning
to accept of a post on their side, without stickling for what is calling
the “lead” in the House of Commons. His talents were sure ere long to
overshadow those of his nominal chief but real rival. There was no party
of followers who could feel their honour wounded at his taking a station
comparatively subordinate, and he had, moreover, already descended from
his vantage-ground by the more hazardous acceptance of his Lisbon mission
from and under Lord Castlereagh. It is not, however, to be denied that
his condescension on those two occasions lowered him for a time in public
estimation. It required several fortunate incidents, as well as the
resources of application and genius which he had at command, to regain
that station to which his abilities and character fairly entitled him.
About the time that he resumed a seat in Council and Parliament, the
person whose example and precepts had in earlier days enflamed his
ambition and improved his talents, Mr. Sheridan, was closing a career
more fit,
To point a moral and adorn a tale,
than to exercise the pen of those who, like myself, have shared some
portion of his friendship, enjoyed his society, and retain regard for
his memory. Nothing but a sense of justice to others could induce me to
inflict any on him. Mr. Canning had the gratification of offering some
pecuniary assistance, and what was, in truth, more real service, as well
as more agreeable to him, of paying some attention to his early friend in
his last sickness and adversity. The want of such attentions from some
great names, and from the Prince Regent in particular, no doubt cut him
to the quick. It was perhaps a theme on which his biographer was fairly
entitled to moralise. But when Mr. Moore censures the opulent and titled
companions of Mr. Sheridan’s happier days for not relieving him from his
pecuniary embarrassments, I, whom he almost as inaccurately excepts from
his censure, am bound to say that it is unjust. To my knowledge, some
aid of that nature was offered, and more was possibly accepted than his
biographer relates or than his benefactors ever wished to have recorded.
That the real amount of his debts was small is, I believe, correctly
true; but that it was so is not less strange than true. The inference
that therefore an advance of a sum equal to the debts would have relieved
him from his distresses may seem plausible; but a little reflection on
the real state of the case and on the character of Mr. Sheridan will show
it to be erroneous. His debts, though reported to be enormous, might
be of inconsiderable amount,[236] but they were of a most complicated
nature, and known only to himself. Without his assistance it would have
been impossible, with it not easy, to ascertain their extent. He would
never have assisted any inquiry, or complied with any limitation or
arrangement to secure the application of the money so raised exclusively
to his creditors. Had he even consented to co-operate (which, if my
memory does not mislead me, he above once refused to do), his inveterate
habits of subterfuges and mis-statement were such that little truth
could have been ascertained, and none without affronting and mortifying
him.
In such circumstances, to impute want of generosity or dereliction of
friendship to those who hesitated to afford him pecuniary aid, and
much more to such as merely omitted to come forward for the purpose
of incurring expense in a thankless and impracticable undertaking, is
manifest and gross injustice. The same man who would cheerfully sacrifice
a thousand pounds to save a friend from permanent distress might very
consistently withhold a hundred which would merely postpone his arrest
for a week. But Sheridan’s mind was so perversely constituted that
he would have received without scruple the latter boon from a common
acquaintance, but would never have pardoned a brother for conferring
the former, if he had exacted any co-operation or any unpleasant
acknowledgments as the condition of it.
It is exceedingly painful to chronicle the infirmities of Sheridan’s
character and the faults of Mr. Moore’s book. But that lively, popular,
and warm-hearted writer, in his zeal to exalt his countryman, takes facts
for granted, and then draws hasty conclusions, not only unfair to our
aristocracy (in whose defence I am nowise interested), but injurious to
that association of public men to whom Mr. Sheridan, as well as myself,
professed himself attached, and of whom I have, in a manner, constituted
myself the historian. The injustice of those inferences can only be
exposed by recording the failings that really disqualified Mr. Sheridan
for a station to which his intellectual powers, as well as many other
endowments, would have entitled him among his contemporaries.
It was neither Irish birth nor low extraction (as Mr. Moore not very
covertly insinuates) that excluded Mr. Burke or Mr. Sheridan from a
pre-eminence attained by Lord North, Mr. Fox, and Mr. Pitt, in their
respective parties. Mr. Burke, albeit abounding in knowledge, zeal, and
genius, and of far less questionable honour and integrity, had yet so
little judgment in debate and so little command of his temper in council
or in society, that it was at all times a problem whether he did more
harm or good to the side which he espoused. Had he been placed at the
head of a party, he would have been left without followers in the course
of a year. Such is, at least, a fair inference from his mismanagement
of the impeachment of Hastings and his conduct during the absence of
Mr. Fox, in the King’s illness, in 1788. On the latter occasion, in
less than six weeks he had ceased to be on speaking terms with any man
of consequence in the party. His intemperate language, more than any
other circumstance, enabled Mr. Pitt to rivet his popularity by an
unconstitutional restriction on the prerogatives and a personal stigma on
the Heir-Apparent of the Crown.
Mr. Sheridan, although far more disposed to covet and better qualified
to acquire popularity, was yet less likely to attain the permanent
confidence of a body of independent English gentlemen. I do not speak
merely of his dissipation and intemperate habits, though towards the
close of his life amounting almost to disqualifications; but there were
others of a graver nature, such as not even his fascinating manners and
exquisite wit (for the attainment of special and immediate purposes
almost irresistible) could, in any protracted commerce or relationship
with him, counterbalance. Those who enjoyed his society most and knew
him best, even while they retained affection for him, were compelled
to acknowledge that jealousy of disposition, delight in artifice and
contrivance, and a proneness to gratify his own vanity with disregard to
the feelings and reputation of other men, and, above all, an occasional
indifference to truth, rendered any habitual reliance on his conduct
preposterous in the extreme. The irregularities and mortifications of his
early life and education may, in a great degree, palliate such defects in
his moral character; but there is no denying them, and the injudicious
endeavour to ascribe all their consequences to the injustice of others
has compelled me to record them. His father,[237] a famous actor, was a
harsh, unjust, and needy man, generally negligent and at times vexatious
to his children. He seems to have been jealous of his son’s talents.
None of them, if we except the power of bitter sarcasm, were inherited
from him. That unamiable faculty he must, indeed, have possessed, if it
be true that, on its being remarked how wonderful was the delineation of
opposite characters in the _School for Scandal_, he replied: “Richard
had only to dip his pen in his own heart, and he had both Joseph and
Charles.” His mother,[238] the authoress of _Sidney Bidulph_, was a
gentle, virtuous, clever, and unhappy woman. She died abroad of a
consumption; and her sufferings were aggravated by hard usage from her
husband and anxiety about her absent and neglected children.
The salary for Richard Brinsley’s education at Harrow, where he had been
left, was irregularly paid. He was slighted by the masters and tormented
by the boys, as a poor player’s son. I have heard him relate, with tears
in his eyes,[239] that he never met with kindness at school but from
Dr. Parr.[240] He was soon afterwards removed to Bath. His father had
a project of establishing a school of rhetoric there, and destined his
son to be one of his ushers. The scheme failed, and the intended usher
commenced a man of wit and gallantry.
The adventures of that part of his life are, I believe, correctly
recounted by Moore. He used to relate a scene with his father, about this
period, somewhat less romantic than ludicrous. The retired actor was in
the habit of haranguing his two sons after supper on the consequences
of drunkenness and the motives which had induced him to renounce that
vice and avoid all excess in wine. To enforce his precepts he denied
them all access to his bottle, but he filled and emptied his own glass
so frequently in the earnestness of discourse, that ere the lecture on
sobriety was finished the two disciples were compelled to convey the
professor of that virtue drunk to bed.
His long confinement from illness in Soho Square was the only period
of his life in which he devoted himself to reading or study. He had no
great appetite for general knowledge. Endowed as he was with the powers
of memory and observation, he had less learning than the common run of
well-educated men in society. He was conscious of his deficiency; yet he
sought to make it appear greater than it really was, and concealed the
information he had, with the hopes of giving to his wit and eloquence
(often very elaborate) the air of genius and inspiration. He managed this
so well that his pleasantry and replies appeared to common acquaintance
sudden sallies excited by the occasion, and even to those who suspected
them to be studied, tinctured with a sort of archness and complacency at
the opportunity of introducing them, which lent them fresh relish, and
added to their effect in society.