Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Volume I Part 35

Congratulations on his success poured in upon Mr. Sheridan, as may be supposed, from all quarters; and the letters that he received from his own family on the occasion were preserved by him carefully and fondly through life. The following extract from one written by Charles Sheridan is highly honorable to both brothers:--

"Dublin Castle, 13th February, 1787.

"MY DEAR d.i.c.k,

"Could I for a moment forget you were my brother, I should, merely as an Irishman, think myself bound to thank you, for the high credit you have done your country. You may be a.s.sured, therefore, that the sense of national pride, which I in common with all your countrymen on this side of the water must feel on this splendid occasion, acquires no small increase of personal satisfaction, when I reflect to whom Ireland is indebted, for a display of ability so unequalled, that the honor derived from it seems too extensive to be concentred in an individual, but ought to give, and I am persuaded will give, a new respect for the name of Irishman. I have heard and read the accounts of your speech, and of the astonis.h.i.+ng impression it made, with tears of exultation--but what will flatter you more--I can solemnly declare it to be a fact, that I have, since the news reached us, seen good honest _Irish_ pride, national pride I mean, bring tears into the eyes of many persons, on this occasion, who never saw you. I need not, after what I have stated, a.s.sure you, that it is with the most heartfelt satisfaction that I offer you my warmest congratulations...."

The following is from his eldest sister, Mrs. Joseph Lefanu:--

"16th February, 1787.

"MY DEAR BROTHER,

"The day before yesterday I received the account of your glorious speech. Mr. Crauford was so good as to write a more particular and satisfactory one to Mr. Lefanu than we could have received from the papers. I have watched the first interval of ease from a cruel and almost incessant headache to give vent to my feelings, and tell you how much I rejoice in your success. May it be entire! May the G.o.d who fas.h.i.+oned you, and gave you powers to sway the hearts of men and control their wayward wills, be equally favorable to you in all your undertakings, and make your reward here and hereafter! Amen, from the bottom of my soul! My affection for you has been ever 'pa.s.sing the love of women.' Adverse circ.u.mstances have deprived me of the pleasure of your society, but have had no effect in weakening my regard for you. I know your heart too well to suppose that regard is indifferent to you, and soothingly sweet to me is the idea that in some pause of thought from the important matters that occupy your mind, your earliest friend is sometimes recollected by you.

"I know you are much above the little vanity that seeks its gratification in the praises of the million, but you must be pleased with the applause of the discerning,--with the tribute I may say of affection paid to the goodness of your heart. People love your character as much as they admire your talents. My father is, in a degree that I did not expect, gratified with the general attention you have excited here: he seems truly pleased that men should say, 'There goes the father of Gaul.' If your fame has shed a ray of brightness over all so distinguished as to be connected with you, I am sure I may say it has infused a ray of gladness into my heart, deprest as it has been with ill health and long confinement...."

There is also another letter from this lady, of the same date, to Mrs.

Sheridan, which begins thus enthusiastically:--

"MY DEAR SHERI.

"Nothing but death could keep me silent on such an occasion as this. I wish you joy--I am sure you feel it: 'oh moments worth whole ages past, and all that are to come.' You may laugh at my enthusiasm if you please --I glory in it...."

In the month of April following, Mr. Sheridan opened the Seventh Charge, which accused Hastings of corruption, in receiving bribes and presents.

The orator was here again lucky in having a branch of the case allotted to him, which, though by no means so susceptible of the ornaments of eloquence as the former, had the advantage of being equally borne out by testimony, and formed one of the most decided features of the cause. The avidity, indeed, with which Hastings exacted presents, and then concealed them as long as there was a chance of his being able to appropriate them to himself, gave a mean and ordinary air to iniquities, whose magnitude would otherwise have rendered them imposing, if not grand.

The circ.u.mstances, under which the present from Cheyte Sing was extorted shall be related when I come to speak of the great Speech in Westminster Hall. The other strong cases of corruption, on which Mr. Sheridan now dwelt, were the sums given by the Munny Begum (in return for her appointment to a trust for which, it appears, she was unfit), both to Hastings himself and his useful agent, Middleton. This charge, as far as regards the latter, was never denied--and the suspicious lengths to which the Governor-general went, in not only refusing all inquiry into his own share of the transaction, but having his accuser, Nuncomar, silenced by an unjust sentence of death, render his acquittal on this charge such a stretch of charity, as nothing but a total ignorance of the evidence and all its bearings can justify.

The following pa.s.sage, with which Sheridan wound up his Speech on this occasion, is as strong an example as can be adduced of that worst sort of florid style, which prolongs metaphor into allegory, and, instead of giving in a single sentence the essence of many flowers, spreads the flowers themselves, in crude heaps, over a whole paragraph:--

"In conclusion (he observed), that, although within this rank, but infinitely too fruitful wilderness of iniquities--within this dismal and unhallowed labyrinth--it was most natural to cast an eye of indignation and concern over the wide and towering forest of enormities--all rising in the dusky magnificence of guilt; and to fix the dreadfully excited attention upon the huge trunks of revenge, rapine, tyranny, and oppression; yet it became not less necessary to trace out the poisonous weeds, the baleful brushwood, and all the little, creeping, deadly plants, which were, in quant.i.ty and extent, if possible, more noxious.

The whole range of this far-spreading calamity was sown in the hot-bed of corruption; and had risen, by rapid and mature growth, into every species of illegal and atrocious violence."

At the commencement of the proceedings against Hastings, an occurrence, immediately connected with them, had brought Sheridan and his early friend Halhed together, under circ.u.mstances as different as well can be imagined from those under which they had parted as boys. The distance, indeed, that had separated them in the interval was hardly greater than the divergence that had taken place in their pursuits; for, while Sheridan had been converted into a senator and statesman, the lively Halhed had become an East Indian Judge, and a learned commentator on the Gentoo Laws. Upon the subject, too, on which they now met, their views and interests were wholly opposite,--Sheridan being the accuser of Hastings, and Halhed his friend. The following are the public circ.u.mstances that led to their interview.

In one of the earliest debates on the Charges against the Governor- general, Major Scott having a.s.serted that, when Mr. Fox was preparing his India Bill, overtures of accommodation had been made, by his authority, to Mr. Hastings, added, that he (Major Scott) "entertained no doubt that, had Mr. Hastings then come home, he would have heard nothing of all this calumny, and all these serious accusations." Mr. Fox, whom this charge evidently took by surprise, replied that he was wholly ignorant of any such overtures, and that "whoever made, or even hinted at such an offer, as coming from him, did it without the smallest shadow of authority." By an explanation, a few days after, from Mr. Sheridan, it appeared that he was the person who had taken the step alluded to by Major Scott. His interference, however, he said, was solely founded upon an opinion which he had himself formed with respect to the India Bill,-- namely, that it would be wiser, on grounds of expediency, not to make it retrospective in any of its clauses. In consequence of this opinion, he had certainly commissioned a friend to inquire of Major Scott, whether, if Mr. Hastings were recalled, he would come home;--but "that there had been the most distant idea of bartering with Mr. Hastings for his support of the Indian Bill, he utterly denied." In conclusion, he referred, for the truth of what he had now stated, to Major Scott, who instantly rising, acknowledged that, from inquiries which he had since made of the gentleman deputed to him by Mr. Sheridan on the occasion, he was ready to bear testimony to the fairness of the statement just submitted to the House, and to admit his own mistake in the interpretation which he had put on the transaction.

It was in relation to this misunderstanding that the interview took place in the year 1786 between Sheridan and Halhed--the other persons present being Major Scott and Doctor Parr, from whom I heard the circ.u.mstance. The feelings of this venerable scholar towards "iste Scotus" (as he calls Major Scott in his Preface to b.e.l.l.e.n.denus) were not, it is well known, of the most favorable kind; and he took the opportunity of this interview to tell that gentleman fully what he thought of him:--"for ten minutes," said the Doctor, in describing his aggression, "I poured out upon him hot, scalding abuse--'twas lava, Sir!"

Among the other questions that occupied the attention of Mr. Sheridan during this session, the most important were the Commercial Treaty with France, and the Debts of the Prince of Wales.

The same erroneous views by which the opposition to the Irish Commercial Propositions was directed, still continued to actuate Mr. Fox and his friends in their pertinacious resistance to the Treaty with France;--a measure which reflects high honor upon the memory of Mr. Pitt, as one of the first efforts of a sound and liberal policy to break through that system of restriction and interference, which had so long embarra.s.sed the flow of international commerce.

The wisdom of leaving trade to find its own way into those channels which the reciprocity of wants established among mankind opens to it, is one of those obvious truths that have lain long on the highways of knowledge, before practical statesmen would condescend to pick them up.

It has been shown, indeed, that the sound principles of commerce which have at last forced their way from the pages of thinking men into the councils of legislators, were more than a hundred years since promulgated by Sir Dudley North; [Footnote: McCulloch's Lectures on Political Economy]--and in the Querist of Bishop Berkeley may be found the outlines of all that the best friends not only of free trade but of free religion would recommend to the rulers of Ireland at the present day. Thus frequently does Truth, before the drowsy world is prepared for her, like

"The nice Morn on the Indian steep, From her cabin'd loophole peep."

Though Mr. Sheridan spoke frequently in the course of the discussions, he does not appear to have, at any time, encountered the main body of the question, but to have confined himself chiefly to a consideration of the effects which the treaty would have upon the interests of Ireland;-- a point which he urged with so much earnestness, as to draw down upon him from one of the speakers the taunting designation of "Self-appointed Representative of Ireland."

Mr. Fox was the most active antagonist of the Treaty; and his speeches on the subject may be counted among those feats of prowess, with which the chivalry of Genius sometimes adorns the cause of Error. In founding, as he did, his chief argument against commercial intercourse upon the "natural enmity" between the two countries, he might have referred, it is true, to high Whig authority:--"The late Lord Oxford told me," says Lord Bolingbroke, "that my Lord Somers being pressed, I know not on what occasion or by whom, on the unnecessary and ruinous continuation of the war, instead of giving reasons to show the necessity of it, contented himself to reply that he had been bred up in a hatred to France."--But no authority, however high, can promote a prejudice into a reason, or conciliate any respect for this sort of vague, traditional hostility, which is often obliged to seek its own justification in the very mischiefs which itself produces. If Mr. Fox ever happened to peruse the praises, which his _Antigallican_ sentiments on this occasion procured for him, from the tedious biographer of his rival, Mr. Gifford, he would have suspected, like Phocion, that he must have spoken something unworthy of himself, to have drawn down upon his head a panegyric from such a quarter.

Another of Mr. Fox's arguments against entering into commercial relations with France, was the danger lest English merchants, by investing their capital in foreign speculations, should become so entangled with the interests of another country as to render them less jealous than they ought to be of the honor of their own, and less ready to rise in its defence, when wronged or insulted. But, a.s.suredly, a want of pugnacity is not the evil to be dreaded among nations--still less between two, whom the orator had just represented as inspired by a "natural enmity" against each other. He ought rather, upon this a.s.sumption, to have welcomed the prospect of a connection, which, by transfusing and blending their commercial interests, and giving each a stake in the prosperity of the other, would not only soften away the animal antipathy attributed to them, but, by enlisting selfishness on the side of peace and amity, afford the best guarantee against wanton warfare, that the wisdom of statesmen or philosophers has yet devised.

Mr. Burke, in affecting to consider the question in an enlarged point of view, fell equally short of its real dimensions; and even descended to the weakness of ridiculing such commercial arrangements, as unworthy altogether of the contemplation of the higher order of statesmen. "The Right Honorable gentleman," he said, "had talked of the treaty as if it were the affair of two little counting-houses, and not of two great countries. He seemed to consider it as a contention between the sign of the Fleur-de-lis, and the sign of the Red Lion, which house should obtain the best custom. Such paltry considerations were below his notice."

In such terms could Burke, from temper or waywardness of judgment, attempt to depreciate a speech which may be said to have contained the first luminous statement of the principles of commerce, with the most judicious views of their application to details, that had ever, at that period, been presented to the House.

The wise and enlightened opinions of Mr. Pitt, both with respect to trade, and another very different subject of legislation, Religion, would have been far more worthy of the imitation of some of his self- styled followers, than those errors which they are so glad to shelter under the sanction of his name. For encroachments upon the property and liberty of the subject, for financial waste and unconst.i.tutional severity, they have the precedent of their great master ever ready on their lips. But, in all that would require wisdom and liberality in his copyists--in the repugnance he felt to restrictions and exclusions, affecting either the worldly commerce of man with man, or the spiritual intercourse of man with his G.o.d,--in all this, like the Indian that quarrels with his idol, these pretended followers not only dissent from their prototype themselves, but violently denounce, as mischievous, his opinions when adopted by others.

In attributing to party feelings the wrong views entertained by the Opposition on this question, we should but defend their sagacity at the expense of their candor; and the cordiality, indeed, with which they came forward this year to praise the spirited part taken by the Minister in the affairs of Holland--even allowing that it would be difficult for Whigs not to concur in a measure so national--sufficiently acquits them of any such perverse spirit of party, as would, for the mere sake of opposition, go wrong because the Minister was right. To the sincerity of one of their objections to the Treaty--namely, that it was a design, on the part of France, to detach England, by the temptation of a mercantile advantage, from her ancient alliance with Holland and her other continental connections--Mr. Burke bore testimony, as far as himself was concerned, by repeating the same opinions, after an interval of ten years, in his testamentary work, the "Letters on a Regicide Peace."

The other important question which I have mentioned as engaging, during the session of 1787, the attention of Mr. Sheridan, was the application to Parliament for the payment of the Prince of Wales's debts. The embarra.s.sments of the Heir Apparent were but a natural consequence of his situation; and a little more graciousness and prompt.i.tude on the part of the King, in interposing to relieve His Royal Highness from the difficulties under which he labored, would have afforded a chance of detaching him from his new political a.s.sociates, of which, however the affection of the Royal parent may have slumbered, it is strange that his sagacity did not hasten to avail itself. A contrary system, however, was adopted. The haughty indifference both of the monarch and his minister threw the Prince entirely on the sympathy of the Opposition. Mr. Pitt identified himself with the obstinacy of the father, while Mr. Fox and the Opposition committed themselves with the irregularities of the son; and the proceedings of both parties were such as might have been expected from their respective connections--the Royal mark was but too visible upon each.

One evil consequence, that was on the point of resulting from the embarra.s.sed situation in which the Prince now found himself, was his acceptance of a loan which the Duke of Orleans had proffered him, and which would have had the perilous tendency of placing the future Sovereign of England in a state of dependence, as creditor, on a Prince of France. That the negotiations in this extraordinary transaction had proceeded farther than is generally supposed, will appear from the following letters of the Duke of Portland to Sheridan:--

"Sunday noon, 13 Dec.

"DEAR SHERIDAN,

"Since I saw you I have received a confirmation of the intelligence which was the subject of our conversation. The particulars varied in no respect from those I related to you--except in the addition of a pension, which is to take place immediately on the event which ent.i.tles the creditors to payment, and is to be granted for life to a nominee of the D. of O----s. The loan was mentioned in a mixed company by two of the Frenchwomen and a Frenchman (none of whose names I know) in _Calonne's_ presence, who interrupted them, by asking, how they came to know any thing of the matter, then set them right in two or three particulars which they had misstated, and afterwards begged them, for G.o.d's sake, not to talk of it, because it might be their complete ruin.

"I am going to Bulstrode--but will return at a moment's notice, if I can be of the least use in getting rid of this odious engagement, or preventing its being entered into, if it should not be yet completed.

"Yours ever,

"P."

"DEAR SHERIDAN,

"I think myself much obliged to you for what you have done. I hope I am not too sanguine in looking to a good conclusion of this bad business. I will certainly be in town by two o'clock.

"Yours ever,

"P."

"Bulstrode, Monday, 14. Dec.

"9 A. M."

Mr. Sheridan, who was now high in the confidence of the Prince, had twice, in the course of the year 1786, taken occasion to allude publicly to the embarra.s.sments of His Royal Highness. Indeed, the decisive measure which this Ill.u.s.trious Person himself had adopted, in reducing his establishment and devoting a part of his income to the discharge of his debts, sufficiently proclaimed the true state of affairs to the public. Still, however, the strange policy was persevered in, of adding the discontent of the Heir-Apparent to the other weapons in the hands of the Opposition;--and, as might be expected, they were not tardy in turning it to account. In the spring of 1787, the embarra.s.sed state of His Royal Highness's affairs was brought formally under the notice of parliament by Alderman Newenham.

During one of the discussions to which the subject gave rise, Mr. Rolle, the member for Devons.h.i.+re, a strong adherent of the ministry, in deprecating the question about to be agitated, affirmed that "it went immediately to affect our Const.i.tution in Church and State." In these solemn words it was well understood, that he alluded to a report at that time generally believed, and, indeed, acted upon by many in the etiquette of private life, that a marriage had been solemnized between the Prince of Wales and Mrs. Fitzherbert--a lady of the Roman Catholic persuasion, who, with more danger to her own peace than to that of either Church or State, had for some time been the distinguished object of His Royal Highness's affection.

Even had an alliance of this description taken place, the provisions of the Royal Marriage Act would have nullified it into a mere ceremony, inefficient, as it was supposed, for any other purpose than that of satisfying the scruples of one of the parties. But that dread of Popery, which in England starts at its own shadow, took alarm at the consequences of an intercourse so heterodox; and it became necessary, in the opinion of the Prince and his friends, to put an end to the apprehensions that were abroad on the subject.

Nor can it be denied that, in the minds of those who believed that the marriage had been actually solemnized, [Footnote: Home Tooke, in his insidious pamphlet on the subject, presumed so far on this belief as to call Mrs. Fitzherbert "Her Royal Highness."] there were, in one point of view, very sufficient grounds of alarm. By the Statute of William and Mary, commonly called the Bill of Rights, it is enacted, among other causes of exclusion from the throne, that "every person who shall marry a Papist shall be excluded and for ever be incapable to inherit the crown of this realm."--In such cases (adds this truly revolutionary Act) "the people of these realms shall be and are hereby absolved of their allegiance." Under this Act, which was confirmed by the Act of Settlement, it is evident that the Heir-Apparent would, by such a marriage as was now attributed to him, have forfeited his right of succession to the throne. From so serious a penalty, however, it was generally supposed, he would have been exempted by the operation of the Royal Marriage Act (12 George III.), which rendered null and void any marriage contracted by any descendant of George II. without the previous consent of the King, or a twelve months' notice given to the Privy Council.