Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Volume II Part 20

"MY DEAR LORD,

"Since I had the honor of Your Lords.h.i.+p's letter, I have received one from Mr. ----, in which, I am sorry to observe he is silent as to my offer of meeting, in the presence of a third person, in order to ascertain whether he did or not so report a conversation with Your Lords.h.i.+p as to impress on my mind a belief that my pretensions would be considered, before the support of Government should be pledged elsewhere. Instead of this, he not only does not admit the precise words quoted by me, but does not state what he allows he did say. If he denies that he ever gave me reason to adopt the belief I have stated, be it so; but the only stipulation I have made is that we should come to an explicit understanding on this subject,--not with a view to quoting words or repeating names, but that the misapprehension, whatever it was, may be so admitted as not to leave me under an unmerited degree of discredit and disgrace. Mr. ---- certainly never encouraged me to stand for Westminster, but, on the contrary, advised me to support Lord Percy, which made me the more mark at the time the fairness with which I thought he apprised me of the preference my pretensions were likely to receive in Your Lords.h.i.+p's consideration.

"Unquestionably Your Lords.h.i.+p's recollection of what pa.s.sed between Mr. ---- and yourself must be just; and were it no more than what you said on the same subject to Lord Howick, I consider it as a mark of attention; but what has astonished me is, that Mr. ---- should ever have informed Your Lords.h.i.+p, as he admits he did, that I had no intention of offering myself. This naturally must have put from your mind whatever degree of disposition was there to have made a preferable application to me; and Lord Howick's answer to your question, on which I have ventured to make a friendly remonstrance, must have confirmed Mr. ----'s report. But allow me to suppose that I had myself seen Your Lords.h.i.+p, and that you had explicitly promised me the support of Government, and had afterwards sent for me and informed me that it was at all an object to you that I should give way to Lord Percy, I a.s.sure you, with the utmost sincerity, that I should cheerfully have withdrawn myself, and applied every interest I possessed as your Lords.h.i.+p should have directed.

"All I request is, that what pa.s.sed between me and Mr. ---- may take an intelligible shape before any common friend, or before Your Lords.h.i.+p.

This I conceive to be a preliminary due to my own honor, and what he ought not to evade."

The Address which he delivered, at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, in declining the offer of support which many of the electors still pressed upon him, contains some of those touches of personal feeling which a biographer is more particularly bound to preserve. In speaking of Mr.

Fox, he said,--

"It is true there have been occasions upon which I have differed with him --painful recollections of the most painful moments of my political life!

Nor were there wanting those who endeavored to represent these differences as a departure from the homage which his superior mind, though unclaimed by him, was ent.i.tled to, and from the allegiance of friends.h.i.+p which our hearts all swore to him. But never was the genuine and confiding texture of his soul more manifest than on such occasions; he knew that nothing on earth could detach me from him; and he resented insinuations against the sincerity and integrity of a friend, which he would not have noticed had they been pointed against himself. With such a man to have battled in the cause of genuine liberty,--with such a man to have struggled against the inroads of oppression and corruption,--with such an example before me, to have to boast that I never in my life gave one vote in Parliament that was not on the side of freedom, is the congratulation that attends the retrospect of my public life. His friends.h.i.+p was the pride and honor of my days. I never, for one moment, regretted to share with him the difficulties, the calumnies, and sometimes even the dangers, that attended an honorable course. And now, reviewing my past political life, were the option possible that I should retread the path. I solemnly and deliberately declare that I would prefer to pursue the same course; to bear up under the same pressure; to abide by the same principles; and remain by his side an exile from power, distinction, and emolument, rather than be at this moment a splendid example of successful servility or prosperous apostacy, though clothed with power, honor, t.i.tles, gorged with sinecures, and lord of h.o.a.rds obtained from the plunder of the people."

At the conclusion of his Address he thus alludes, with evidently a deep feeling of discontent, to the circ.u.mstances that had obliged him to decline the honor now proposed to him:--

"Illiberal warnings have been held out, most unauthoritatively I know, that by persevering in the present contest I may risk my official situation, and if I retire, I am aware, that minds, as coa.r.s.e and illiberal, may a.s.sign the dread of that as my motive. To such insinuations I shall scorn to make any other reply than a reference to the whole of my past political career. I consider it as no boast to say, that any one who has struggled through such a portion of life as I have, without obtaining an office, is not likely to I abandon his principles to retain one when acquired. If riches do not give independence, the next-best thing to being very rich is to have been used to be very poor.

But independence is not allied to wealth, to birth, to rank, to power, to t.i.tles, or to honor. Independence is in the mind of a man, or it is no where. On this ground were I to decline the contest, should scorn the imputation that should bring the purity of my purpose into doubt. No Minister can expect to find in me a servile va.s.sal. No Minister can expect from me the abandonment of any principle I have avowed, or any pledge I have given. I know not that I have hitherto shrunk in place from opinions I have maintained while in opposition. Did there exist a Minister of a different cast from any I know in being, were he to attempt to exact from me a different conduct, my office should be at his service tomorrow. Such a Minister might strip me of my situation, in some respects of considerable emolument, but he could not strip me of the proud conviction that I was right; he could not strip me of my own self-esteem; he could not strip me, I think, of some portion of the confidence and good opinion of the people. But I am noticing the calumnious threat I allude to more than it deserves. There can be no peril, I venture to a.s.sert, under the present Government, in the free exercise of discretion, such as belongs to the present question. I therefore disclaim the merit of putting anything to hazard. If I have missed the opportunity of obtaining all the support I might, perhaps, have had on the present occasion, from a very scrupulous delicacy, which I think became and was inc.u.mbent upon me, but which I by no means conceive to have been a fit rule for others, I cannot repent it. While the slightest aspiration of breath pa.s.sed those lips, now closed for ever,--while one drop of life's blood beat in that heart, now cold for ever,--I could not, I ought not, to have acted otherwise than I did.--I now come with a very embarra.s.sed feeling to that declaration which I yet think you must have expected from me, but which I make with reluctance, because, from the marked approbation I have experienced from you, I fear that with reluctance you will receive it.--I feel myself under the necessity of retiring from this contest."

About three weeks after, ensued the Dissolution of Parliament,--a measure attended with considerable unpopularity to the Ministry, and originating as much in the enmity of one of its members to Lord Sidmouth, as the introduction of that n.o.ble Lord among them, at all, was owing to the friends.h.i.+p of another. In consequence of this event, Lord Percy having declined offering himself again, Mr. Sheridan became a candidate for Westminster, and after a most riotous contest with a demagogue of the moment, named Paul, was, together with Sir Samuel Hood, declared duly elected.

The moderate measure in favor of the Roman Catholics, which the Ministry now thought it due to the expectations of that body to bring forward, was, as might be expected, taken advantage of by the King to rid himself of their counsels, and produced one of those bursts of bigotry, by which the people of England have so often disgraced themselves. It is sometimes a misfortune to men of wit, that they put their opinions in a form to be remembered. We might, perhaps, have been ignorant of the keen, but worldly view which Mr. Sheridan, on this occasion, took of the hardihood of his colleagues, if he had not himself expressed it in a form so portable to the memory. "He had often," he said, "heard of people knocking out their brains against a wall, but never before knew of any one building a wall expressly for the purpose."

It must be owned, indeed, that, though far too sagacious and liberal not to be deeply impressed with the justice of the claims advanced by the Catholics, he was not altogether disposed to go those generous lengths in their favor, of which Mr. Fox and a few others of their less calculating friends were capable. It was his avowed opinion, that, though the measure, whenever brought forward, should be supported and enforced by the whole weight of the party, they ought never so far to identify or enc.u.mber themselves with it, as to make its adoption a sine-qua-non of their acceptance or retention of office. His support, too, of the Ministry of Mr. Addington, which was as virtually pledged against the Catholics as that which now succeeded to power, sufficiently shows the secondary station that this great question occupied in his mind; nor can such a deviation from the usual tone of his political feelings be otherwise accounted for, than by supposing that he was aware of the existence of a strong indisposition to the measure in that quarter, by whose views and wishes his public conduct was, in most cases, regulated.

On the general question, however, of the misgovernment of Ireland, and the disabilities of the Catholics, as forming its most prominent feature, his zeal was always forthcoming and ardent,--and never more so than during the present Session, when, on the question of the Irish Arms Bill, and his own motion upon the State of Ireland, he distinguished himself by an animation and vigor worthy of the best period of his eloquence.

Mr. Grattan, in supporting the coercive measures now adopted against his country, had shown himself, for once, alarmed into a concurrence with the wretched system of governing by Insurrection Acts, and, for once, lent his sanction to the principle upon which all such measures are founded, namely, that of enabling Power to defend itself against the consequences of its own tyranny and injustice. In alluding to some expressions used by this great man, Sheridan said:--

"He now happened to recollect what was said by a Right Honorable Gentleman, to whose opinions they all deferred, (Mr. Grattan,) that notwithstanding he voted for the present measure, with all its defects, rather than lose it altogether, yet that gentleman said, that he hoped to secure the revisionary interest of the Const.i.tution to Ireland. But when he saw that the Const.i.tution was suspended from the year 1796 to the present period, and that it was now likely to be continued for three years longer, the danger was that we might lose the interest altogether;--when we were mortgaged for such a length of time, at last a foreclosure might take place."

The following is an instance of that happy power of applying old stories, for which Mr. Windham, no less than Sheridan, was remarkable, and which, by promoting anecdote into the service of argument and wit, enn.o.bles it, when trivial, and gives new youth to it, when old.

"When they and others complain of the discontents of the Irish, they never appear to consider the cause. When they express their surprise that the Irish are not contented, while according to their observation, that people have so much reason to be happy, they betray a total ignorance of their actual circ.u.mstances. The fact is, that the tyranny practised upon the Irish has been throughout unremitting. There has been no change but in the manner of inflicting it. They have had nothing but variety in oppression, extending to all ranks and degrees of a certain description of the people. If you would know what this varied oppression consisted in, I refer you to the Penal Statutes you have repealed, and to some of those which still exist. There you will see the high and the low equally subjected to the lash of persecution; and yet still some persons affect to be astonished at the discontents of the Irish. But with all my reluctance to introduce any thing ludicrous upon so serious an occasion, I cannot help referring to a little story which those very astonished persons call to my mind. It was with respect to an Irish drummer, who was employed to inflict punishment upon a soldier. When the boy struck high, the poor soldier exclaimed, 'Lower, bless you,' with which the boy complied. But soon after the soldier exclaimed, 'Higher if you please,'

But again he called out, 'A little lower:' upon which the accommodating boy addressed him--'Now, upon my conscience, I see you are a discontented man; for, strike where I may, there's no pleasing you.' Now your complaint of the discontents of the Irish appears to me quite as rational, while you continue to strike, only altering the place of attack."

Upon this speech, which may be considered as the _bouquet_, or last parting blaze of his eloquence, he appears to have bestowed considerable care and thought. The concluding sentences of the following pa.s.sage, though in his very worst taste, were as anxiously labored by him, and put through as many rehearsals on paper, as any of the most highly finished witticisms in The School for Scandal.

"I cannot think patiently of such petty squabbles, while Bonaparte is grasping the nations; while he is surrounding France, not with that iron frontier, for which the wish and childish ambition of Louis XIV. was so eager, but with kingdoms of his own creation; securing the grat.i.tude of higher minds as the hostage, and the fears of others as pledges for his safety. His are no ordinary fortifications. His martello towers are thrones; sceptres tipt with crowns are the palisadoes of his entrenchments, and Kings are his sentinels."

The Reporter here, by "tipping" the sceptres "with crowns," has improved, rather unnecessarily, upon the finery of the original. The following are specimens of the various trials of this pa.s.sage which I find scribbled over detached sc.r.a.ps of paper:--

"Contrast the different att.i.tudes and occupations of the two governments:--B. eighteen months from his capital,--head-quarters in the villages,--neither Berlin nor Warsaw,--dethroning and creating thrones,-- the works he raises are monarchies,--sceptres his palisadoes, thrones his martello towers."

"Commissioning kings,--erecting thrones,--martello towers,--Cambaceres count noses,--Austrians, fine dressed, like Pompey's troops."

"B. fences with sceptres,--his martello towers are thrones,--he alone is, France."

Another Dissolution of Parliament having taken place this year, he again became a candidate for the city of Westminster. But, after a violent contest, during which he stood the coa.r.s.e abuse of the mob with the utmost good humor and playfulness, the election ended in favor of Sir Francis Burdett and Lord Cochrane, and Sheridan was returned, with his friend Mr. Michael Angelo Taylor, for the borough of Ilchester.

In the autumn of 1807 he had conceived some idea of leasing the property of Drury-Lane Theatre, and with that view had set on foot, through Mr.

Michael Kelly, who was then in Ireland, a negotiation with Mr. Frederick Jones, the proprietor of the Dublin Theatre. In explaining his object to Mr. Kelly, in a letter dated August 30, 1807, he describes it as "a plan by which the property may be leased to those who have the skill and the industry to manage it as it should be for their own advantage, upon terms which would render any risk to them almost impossible;--the profit to them, (he adds,) would probably be beyond what I could now venture to state, and yet upon terms which would be much better for the real proprietors than any thing that can arise from the careless and ignorant manner in which the undertaking is now misconducted by those who, my son excepted, have no interest in its success, and who lose nothing by its failure."

The negotiation with Mr. Jones was continued into the following year; and, according to a draft of agreement, which this gentleman has been kind enough to show me, in Sheridan's handwriting, it was intended that Mr. Jones should, on becoming proprietor of one quarter-share of the property, "undertake the management of the Theatre in conjunction with Mr. T. Sheridan, and be ent.i.tled to the same remuneration, namely, 1000.

per annum certain income, and a certain per centage on the net profits arising from the office-receipts, as should be agreed upon," &c. &c.

The following memorandum of a bet connected with this transaction, is of somewhat a higher cla.s.s of wagers than the One Tun Tavern has often had the honor of recording among its archives:--

"_One Tun, St. James's Market, May 26, 1808._"

"In the presence of Messrs. G. Ponsonby, R. Power, and Mr.

Becher, [Footnote: It is not without a deep feeling of melancholy that I transcribe this paper. Of three of my most valued friends,--whose names are signed to it,--Becher, Ponsonby, and Power,--the last has, within a few short months, been s.n.a.t.c.hed away, leaving behind him the recollection of as many gentle and manly virtues as ever concurred to give sweetness and strength to character.] Mr. Jones bets Mr. Sheridan five hundred guineas that he, Mr. Sheridan, does not write, and produce under his name, a play of five acts, or a first piece of three, within the term of three years from the 15th of September next.--It is distinctly to be understood that this bet is not valid unless Mr. Jones becomes a partner in Drury-Lane Theatre before the commencement of the ensuing season.

"Richard Power, "R. B. SHERIDAN, "George Ponsonby, "FRED. EDW. JONES.

"W. W. Becher.

"N. B.--W. W. Becher and Richard Power join, one fifty,--the other one hundred pounds in this bet.

"R. POWER."

The grand movement of Spain, in the year 1808, which led to consequences so important to the rest of Europe, though it has left herself as enslaved and priest-ridden as ever, was hailed by Sheridan with all that prompt and well-timed ardor, with which he alone, of all his party, knew how to meet such great occasions. Had his political a.s.sociates but learned from his example thus to place themselves in advance of the procession of events, they would not have had the triumphal wheels pa.s.s by them and over them so frequently. Immediately on the arrival of the Deputies from Spain, he called the attention of the House to the affairs of that country; and his speech on the subject, though short and unstudied, had not only the merit of falling in with the popular feeling at the moment, but, from the views which it pointed out through the bright opening now made by Spain, was every way calculated to be useful both at home and abroad.

"Let Spain," he said, "see, that we were not inclined to stint the services we had it in our power to render her; that we were not actuated by the desire of any petty advantage to ourselves; but that our exertions were to be solely directed to the attainment of the grand and general object, the emanc.i.p.ation of the world. If the flame were once fairly caught, our success was certain. France would then find, that she had hitherto been contending only against princ.i.p.alities, powers, and authorities, but that she had now to contend against a people."

The death of Lord Lake this year removed those difficulties which had, ever since the appointment of Sheridan to the receivers.h.i.+p of the Duchy of Cornwall, stood in the way of his reaping the full advantages of that office. Previously to the departure of General Lake for India, the Prince had granted to him the reversion of this situation which was then filled by Lord Elliot. It was afterwards, however, discovered that, according to the terms of the Grant, the place could not be legally held or deputed by any one who had not been actually sworn into it before the Prince's Council. On the death of Lord Elliot, therefore, His Royal Highness thought himself authorized, as we have seen, in conferring the appointment upon Mr. Sheridan. This step, however, was considered by the friends of General Lake as not only a breach of promise, but a violation of right; and it would seem from one of the doc.u.ments which I am about to give, that measures were even in train for enforcing the claim by law.

The first is a Letter on the subject from Sheridan to Colonel M'Mahon:--

"MY DEAR M'MAHON,

"_Thursday evening_.

"I have thoroughly considered and reconsidered the subject we talked upon today. Nothing on earth shall make me risk the possibility of the Prince's goodness to me furnis.h.i.+ng an opportunity for a single scurrilous fool's presuming to hint even that he had, in the slightest manner, departed from the slightest engagement. The Prince's right, in point of law and justice, on the present occasion to recall the appointment given, I hold to be incontestible; but, believe me, I am right in the proposition I took the liberty of submitting to His Royal Highness, and which (so far is he from wis.h.i.+ng to hurt General Lake,) he graciously approved. But understand me,--my meaning is to give I up the emoluments of the situation to General Lake, holding the situation at the Prince's pleasure, and abiding by an arbitrated estimate of General Lake's claim, supposing His Royal Highness had appointed him; in other words, to value his interest in the appointment as if he had it, and to pay him for it or resign to him.

"With the Prince's permission I should be glad to meet Mr. Warwick Lake, and I am confident that no two men of common sense and good intentions can fail, in ten minutes, to arrange it so as to meet the Prince's wishes, and not to leave the shadow of a pretence for envious malignity to whisper a word against his decision.

"Yours ever,

"R. B. SHERIDAN.

"I write in great haste--going to A----."

The other Paper that I shall give, as throwing light on the transaction, is a rough and unfinished sketch by Sheridan of a statement, intended to be transmitted to General Lake, containing the particulars of both Grants, and the doc.u.ments connected with them:--

"DEAR GENERAL,

"I am commanded by the Prince of Wales to transmit to you a correct Statement of a transaction in which your name is so much implicated, and in which his feelings have been greatly wounded from a quarter, I am commanded to say, whence he did not expect such conduct.