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!"
CHAPTER IX.
THE PRINCE OF WALES.—FINANCIAL MEASURES.—MR. PITT'S EAST INDIA BILL.— IRISH COMMERCIAL PROPOSITIONS.—PLAN OF THE DUKE OF RICHMOND.—SINKING FUND.
The Whigs, who had now every reason to be convinced of the aversion with which they were regarded at court, had lately been, in some degree, compensated for this misfortune by the accession to their party of the Heir Apparent, who had, since the year 1783, been in the enjoyment of a separate establishment, and taken his seat in the House of Peers as Duke of Cornwall. That a young prince, fond of pleasure and impatient of restraint, should have thrown himself into the arms of those who were most likely to be indulgent to his errors, is nothing surprising, either in politics or ethics. But that mature and enlightened statesmen, with the lessons of all history before their eyes, should have been equally ready to embrace such a rash alliance, or should count upon it as any more than a temporary instrument of faction, is, to say the least of it, one of those self-delusions of the wise, which show how vainly the voice of the Past may speak amid the loud appeals and temptations of the Present. The last Prince of Wales, it is true, by whom the popular cause was espoused, had left the lesson imperfect, by dying before he came to the throne. But this deficiency has since been amply made up; and future Whigs, who may be placed in similar circumstances, will have, at least, one historical warning before their eyes, which ought to be enough to satisfy the most unreflecting and credulous.
In some points, the breach that now took place between the Prince and the King, bore a close resemblance to that which had disturbed the preceding reign. In both cases, the Royal parents were harsh and obstinate—in both cases, money was the chief source of dissension—and, in both cases, the genius, wit, and accomplishments of those with whom the Heir Apparent connected himself, threw a splendor round the political bond between them, which prevented even themselves from perceiving its looseness and fragility.
In the late question of Mr. Fox's India Bill, the Prince of Wales had voted with his political friends in the first division. But, upon finding afterwards that the King was hostile to the measure, his Royal Highness took the prudent step (and with Mr. Fox's full concurrence) of absenting himself entirely from the second discussion, when the Bill, as it is known, was finally defeated. This circumstance, occurring thus early in their intercourse, might have proved to each of the parties in this ill-sorted alliance, how difficult it was for them to remain long and creditably united. [Footnote: The following sensible remarks upon the first interruption of the political connection between the Heir Apparent and the Opposition, are from an unfinished Life of Mr. Sheridan now in my possession—written by one whose boyhood was passed in the society of the great men whom he undertook to commemorate, and whose station and talents would have given to such a work an authenticity and value, that would have rendered the humble memorial, which I have attempted, unnecessary—
"His Royal Highness acted upon this occasion by Mr. Fox's advice and with perfect propriety. At the same time the necessity under which he found himself of so acting may serve as a general warning to Princes of the Blood in this country, to abstain from connecting themselves with party, and engaging either as active supporters or opponents of the administration of the day. The ties of family, the obligations of their situation, the feelings of the public assuredly will condemn them, at some time or other, as in the present instance to desert their own public acts, to fail in their private professions, and to leave their friends at the very moment, in which service and support are the most imperiously required.
"Princes are always suspected proselytes to the popular side. Conscious of this suspicion, they strive to do it away by exaggerated professions, and by bringing to the party which they espouse more violent opinions and more unmeasured language than any which they find. These mighty promises they soon find it unreasonable, impossible, inconvenient to fulfil. Their dereliction of their principles becomes manifest and indefensible, in proportion to the vehemence with which they have pledged themselves always to maintain them, and the contempt and indignation which accompanies their retreat is equivalent to the expectations excited by the boldness and determination of their advance."] On the one side, there was a character to be maintained with the people, which a too complaisant toleration of the errors of royalty might—and, as it happened, did compromise; while, on the other side, there were the obligations of filial duty, which, as in this instance of the India Bill, made desertion decorous, at a time when co- operation would have been most friendly and desirable. There was also the perpetual consciousness of being destined to a higher station, in which, while duty would perhaps demand an independence of all party whatever, convenience would certainly dictate a release from the restraints of Whiggism.
It was most fortunate for Mr. Sheridan, on the rout of his party that ensued, to find himself safe in his seat for Stafford once more, and the following document, connected with his election, is sufficiently curious, in more respects than one, to be laid before the reader:
R. B. Sheridan, Esq. Expenses at the Borough of Stafford for Election, Anno 1784.
284 Burgesses, paid L5 5 0 each…………….L1,302 0 0
Yearly Expenses since.
L s. d.
House-rent and taxes ……. 23 6 6
Servant at 6s. per week, … 15 12 0
board wages
Ditto, yearly wages …….. 8 8 0
Coals, &c. …………….. 10 0 0
Ale tickets ……………. 40 0 0
Half the members' plate …. 25 0 0
Swearing young burgesses … 10 0 0
Subscription to the …….. 5 5 0
Infirmary
Ditto Clergymen's widows … 2 2 0
Ringers ……………….. 4 4 0
————- 86 11 0
—————
One year ………… 143 17 6
Multiplied by years . 6
————— 863 5 0
Total expense of six years' parliament, exclusive of expense incurred during the time of election, and your own annual expenses…………………….. L2,165 5 0
The followers of the Coalition had been defeated in almost all directions, and it was computed that no less than 160 of them had been left upon the field,—with no other consolation than what their own wit afforded them, in the title which they bestowed upon themselves of "Fox's Martyrs."
This reduction in the ranks of his enemies, at the very commencement of his career, left an open space for the youthful minister, which was most favorable to the free display of his energies. He had, indeed, been indebted, throughout the whole struggle, full as much to a lucky concurrence of circumstances as to his talents and name for the supremacy to which he so rapidly rose. All the other eminent persons of the day had either deeply entangled themselves in party ties, or taken the gloss off their reputations by some unsuccessful or unpopular measures; and as he was the only man independent enough of the House of Commons to be employed by the King as a weapon against it, so was he the only one sufficiently untried in public life, to be able to draw unlimitedly on the confidence of the people, and array them, as he did, in all the enthusiasm of ignorance, on his side. Without these two advantages, which he owed to his youth and inexperience, even loftier talents than his would have fallen far short of his triumph.
The financial affairs of the country, which the war had considerably deranged, and which none of the ministries that ensued felt sure enough of themselves to attend to, were, of course, among the first and most anxious objects of his administration; and the wisdom of the measures which he brought forward for their amelioration was not only candidly acknowledged by his opponents at the time, but forms at present the least disputable ground, upon which his claim to reputation as a finance-minister rests. Having found, on his accession to power, an annual deficiency of several millions in the revenue, he, in the course of two years, raised the income of the country so high as to afford a surplus for the establishment of his Sinking Fund. Nor did his merit lie only in the mere increase of income, but in the generally sound principles of the taxation by which he accomplished it, in the improvements introduced into the collection of the revenue, and the reform effected in the offices connected with it, by the simplification of the mode of keeping public accounts.
Though Mr. Sheridan delivered his opinion upon many of the taxes proposed, his objections were rather to the details than the general object of the measures; and it may be reckoned, indeed, a part of the good fortune of the minister, that the financial department of Opposition at this time was not assumed by any more adventurous calculator, who might have perplexed him, at least by ingenious cavils, however he might have failed to defeat him by argument. As it was, he had the field almost entirely to himself; for Sheridan, though acute, was not industrious enough to be formidable, and Mr. Fox, from a struggle, perhaps, between candor and party-feeling, absented himself almost entirely from the discussion of the new taxes. [Footnote: "He had absented himself," he said, "upon principle; that, though he might not be able to approve of the measures which had been adopted, he did not at the same time think himself authorized to condemn them, or to give them opposition, unless he had been ready to suggest others less distressing to the subject."—Speech on Navy Bills, &c. &c.]
The only questions, in which the angry spirit of the late conflict still survived, were the Westminster Scrutiny and Mr. Pitt's East India Bill. The conduct of the minister in the former transaction showed that his victory had not brought with it those generous feelings towards the vanquished, which, in the higher order of minds, follows as naturally as the calm after a tempest. There must, indeed, have been something peculiarly harsh and unjust in the proceedings against his great rival on this occasion, which could induce so many of the friends of the minister—then in the fulness of his popularity and power—to leave him in a minority and vote against the continuance of the Scrutiny. To this persecution, however, we are indebted for a speech of Mr. Fox, which is (as he, himself, in his opening, pronounced it would be) one of his best and noblest; and which is reported, too, with such evident fidelity, as well as spirit, that we seem to hear, while we read, the "Demosthenem ipsum" uttering it.
Sheridan had, it appears, written a letter, about this time, to his brother Charles, in which, after expressing the feelings of himself and his brother Whigs, at the late unconstitutional victory over their party, he added, "But you are all so void of principle, in Ireland, that you cannot enter into our situation." Charles Sheridan, who, in the late changes, had not thought it necessary to pay his principles the compliment of sacrificing his place to them, considered himself, of course, as included in this stigma; and the defence of time-serving politics which he has set up in his answer, if not so eloquent as that of the great Roman man master of this art in his letter to Lentulus, is, at least, as self-conscious and labored, and betrays altogether a feeling but too worthy of the political meridian from which it issued.
"Dublin Castle, 10th March, 1784.
"MY DEAR DICK,
"I am much obliged to you for the letter you sent me by Orde; I began to think you had forgot I was in existence, but I forgive your past silence on account of your recent kind attention. The new Irish administration have come with the olive branch in their hand, and very wisely, I think; the system, the circumstances, and the manners of the two countries are so totally different, that I can assure you nothing could be so absurd as any attempt to extend the party-distinctions which prevail on your side of the water, to this. Nothing, I will venture to assert, can possibly preserve the connection between England and Ireland, but a permanent government here, acting upon fixed principles, and pursuing systematic measures. For this reason a change of Chief Governor, ought to be nothing more than a simple transfer of government, and by no means to make any change in that political system respecting this country which England must adopt, let who will be the minister and whichever party may acquire the ascendancy, if she means to preserve Ireland as a part of the British empire.
"You will say this is a very good plan for people in place, as it tends to secure them against all contingencies, but this, I give you my word, is not my reason for thinking as I do. I must, in the first place, acquaint you that there never can be hereafter in this country any such thing as party connections founded upon political principles; we have obtained all the great objects for which Ireland had contended for many years, and there does not now remain one national object of sufficient importance to unite men in the same pursuit. Nothing but such objects ever did unite men in this kingdom, and that not from principle, but because the spirit of the people was so far roused with respect to points in which the pride, the interest, the commerce, and the prosperity of the nation at large was so materially concerned, that the House of Commons, if they had not the virtue to forward, at least wanted the courage to oppose, the general and determined wish of the whole kingdom; they therefore made a virtue of necessity, joined the standard of a very small popular party; both Ins and Outs voted equally against government, the latter of course, and the former because each individual thought himself safe in the number who followed his example.
"This is the only instance, I believe, in the history of Irish politics, where a party ever appeared to act upon public principle, and as the cause of this singular instance has been removed by the attainment of the only objects which could have united men in one pursuit, it is not probable that we shall in future furnish any other example that will do honor to our public spirit. If you reflect an instant, you will perceive that our subordinate situation necessarily prevents the formation of any party among us, like those you have in England, composed of persons acting upon certain principles, and pledged to support each other. I am willing to allow you that your exertions are directed by public spirit; but if those exertions did not lead to power, you must acknowledge that it is probable they would not be made, or, if made, that they would not be of much use. The object of a party in England is either to obtain power for themselves, or to take it from those who are in possession of it—they may do this from the purest motives, and with the truest regard for the public good, but still you must allow that power is a very tempting object, the hopes of obtaining it no small incentive to their exertions, and the consequences of success to the individuals of which the party is composed, no small strengthening to the bands which unite them together. Now, if you were to expect similar parties to be formed in Ireland, you would exact of us more virtue than is necessary for yourselves. From the peculiar situation of this country it is impossible that the exertions of any party here can ever lead to power. Here then is one very tempting object placed out of our reach, and, with it, all those looked-for consequences to individuals, which, with you, induce them to pledge themselves to each other; so that nothing but poor public spirit would be left to keep our Irish party together, and consequently a greater degree of disinterestedness would be necessary in them, than is requisite in one of your English parties.
"That no party exertion here can ever lead to power is obvious when you reflect, that we have in fact no Irish government; all power here being lodged in a branch of the English government, we have no cabinet, no administration of our own, no great offices of state, every office we have is merely ministerial, it confers no power but that of giving advice, which may or may not be followed by the Chief Governor. As all power, therefore, is lodged solely in the English government, of which the Irish is only a branch, it necessarily follows that no exertion of any party here could ever lead to power, unless they overturned the English government in this country, or unless the efforts of such a party in the Irish House of Commons could overturn the British administration in England, and the leaders of it get into their places; —the first, you will allow, would not be a very wise object, and the latter you must acknowledge to be impossible.
"Upon the same principle, it would be found very difficult to form a party in this country which should co-operate with any particular party in England, and consent to stand or fall with them. The great leading interests in this kingdom are of course strongly averse to forming any such connections on your side of the water, as it would tend to create a fluctuation in the affairs of this country, that would destroy all their consequence; and, as to the personal friends which a party in England may possibly have in this country, they must in the nature of things be few in number, and consequently could only injure themselves by following the fortunes of a party in England, without being able to render that party the smallest service. And, at all events, to such persons this could be nothing but a losing game. It would be, to refuse to avail themselves of their connections or talents in order to obtain office or honors, and to rest all their pretensions upon the success of a party in another kingdom, to which success they could not in the smallest degree contribute. You will admit that to a party in England, no friends on this side of the water would be worth having who did not possess connections or talents; and if they did possess these, they must of course force themselves into station, let the government of this country be in whose hands it may, and that upon a much more permanent footing than if they were connected with a party in England. What therefore could they gain by such a connection? nothing but the virtue of self-denial, in continuing out of office as long as their friends were so, the chance of coming in when their friends obtained power, and only the chance, for there are interests in this country which must not be offended; and the certainty of going out whenever their friends in England should be dismissed. So that they would exchange the certainty of station upon a permanent footing acquired by their own efforts, connections or talents, for the chance of station upon a most precarious footing, in which they would be placed in the insignificant predicament of doing nothing for themselves, and resting their hopes and ambition upon the labors of others.
"In addition to what I have said respecting the consequences of the subordinate situation of this country, you are to take into consideration how peculiarly its inhabitants are circumstanced. Two out of three millions are Roman Catholics—I believe the proportion is still larger—and two-thirds of the remainder are violent rank Presbyterians, who have always been, but most particularly of late, strongly averse to all government placed in the hands of the members of the church of England; nine-tenths of the property, the landed property of the country I mean, is in the possession of the latter. You will readily conceive how much these circumstances must give persons of property in this kingdom a leaning towards government; how necessarily they must make them apprehensive for themselves, placed between such potent enemies; and how naturally it must make them look up to English government, in whatever hands it may be, for that strength and support, which the smallness of their numbers prevents their finding among themselves; and consequently you will equally perceive that those political or party principles which create such serious differences among you in England, are matters of small importance to the persons of landed property in this country, when compared with the necessity of their having the constant support of an English government. Here, my dear Dick, is a very long answer to a very few lines in your postscript. But I could not avoid boring you on the subject, when you say 'that we are all so void of principle that we cannot enter into your situation.'
"I have received with the greatest pleasure the accounts of the very considerable figure you have made this sessions in the House of Commons. As I have no doubt but that your Parliament will be dissolved, God send you success a second time at Stafford, and the same to your friend at Westminster. I will not forgive you if you do not give me the first intelligence of both those events. I shall say nothing to you on the subject of your English politics, only that I feel myself much more partial to one side of the question than, in my present situation, it would be of any use to me to avow. I am the happiest domestic man in the world, and am in daily expectation of an addition to that happiness, and own that a home, which I never leave without regret, nor return to without delight, has somewhat abated my passion for politics, and that warmth I once felt about public questions. But it has not abated the warmth of my private friendships; it has not abated my regard for Fitzpatrick, my anxiety for you, and the warmth of my wishes for the success of your friends, considering them as such. I beg my love to Mrs. Sheridan and Tom, and am, dear Dick,
"Most affectionately yours, C. F. Sheridan."
With respect to the Bill for the better government of India, which Mr. Pitt substituted for that of his defeated rival, its provisions are now, from long experience, so familiarly known, that it would be superfluous to dwell upon either their merits or defects. [Footnote: Three of the principal provisions were copied from the Propositions of Lord North in 1781—in allusion to which Mr. Powys said of the measure, that "it was the voice of Jacob, but the hand of Esau."] The two important points in which it differed from the measure of Mr. Fox were, in leaving the management of their commercial concerns still in the hands of the Company, and in making the Crown the virtual depositary of Indian patronage, [Footnote: "Mr. Pitt's Bill continues the form of the Company's government, and professes to leave the patronage under certain conditions, and the commerce without condition, in the hands of the Company; but places all matters relating to the civil and military government and revenues in the hands of six Commissioners, to be nominated and appointed by His Majesty, under the title of 'Commissioners of the Affairs of India,' which Board of Commissioners is invested with the 'superintendence and control over all the British territorial possessions in the East Indies, and over the affairs of the United Company of Merchants trading thereto.'"— Comparative Statement of the Two Bills, read from his place by Mr. Sheridan, on the Discussion of the Declaratory Acts in 1788, and afterwards published.