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 ho
pe 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, — an
d 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.
Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan Page 120