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Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2

T >> Thomas Moore >> Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2




It must be owned, too, that the obect of the Alarmists in the war,
however grossly inconsistent with their former principles, had the merit
of being far more definite than that of Mr. Pitt; and, had it been singly
and consistently pursued from the first, with all the vigor and
concentration of means so strenuously recommended by Mr. Burke, might
have justified its quixotism in the end by a more speedy and less ruinous
success. As it was, however, the divisions, jealousies and alarms which
Mr. Pitt's views towards a future dismemberment of France excited not
only among the Continental powers, but among the French themselves,
completely defeated every hope and plan for either concert without or co
operation within. At the same time, the distraction of the efforts of
England from the heart of French power to its remote extremities, in what
Mr. Windham called "a war upon sugar Islands," was a waste of means as
unstatesmanlike as it was calamitous, and fully entitled Mr. Pitt to the
satire on his policy, conveyed in the remark of a certain distinguished
lady, who said to him, upon hearing of some new acquisition in the West
Indies, "I protest, Mr. Pitt, if you go on thus, you will soon be master
of every island in the world except just those two little ones, England
and Ireland." [Footnote: Mr. Sheridan quoted this anecdote in one of his
speeches in 1794.]

That such was the light in which Mr. Sheridan himself viewed the mode of
carrying on the war recommended by the Alarmists, in comparison with that
which Mr. Pitt in general adopted, appears from the following passage in
his speech upon Spanish affairs in the year 1808:--

"There was hardly a person, except his Right Honorable Friend near him,
(Mr. Windham,) and Mr. Burke, who since the Revolution of France had
formed adequate notions of the necessary steps to be taken. The various
governments which this country had seen during that period were always
employed in filching for a sugar-island, or some other object of
comparatively trifling moment, while the main and principal purpose was
lost and forgotten,"

Whatever were the failures of Mr. Pitt abroad, at home his ascendancy was
fixed and indisputable; and, among all the triumphs of power which he
enjoyed during his career, the tribute now paid to him by the Whig
Aristocracy, in taking shelter under his ministry from the dangers of
Revolution, could not have been the least gratifying to his haughty
spirit. The India Bill had ranged on his side the King and the People,
and the Revolution now brought to his banner the flower of the Nobility
of both parties. His own estimate of rank may be fairly collected both
from the indifference which he showed to its honors himself, and from the
depreciating profusion with which he lavished them upon others. It may be
doubted whether his respect for Aristocracy was much increased, by the
readiness which he now saw in some of his high-born opponents, to
volunteer for safety into his already powerful ranks, without even
pausing to try the experiment, whether safety might not have been
reconcilable with principle in their own. It is certain that, without the
accession of so much weight and influence, he never could have ventured
upon the violations of the Constitution that followed--nor would the
Opposition, accordingly, have been driven by these excesses of power into
that reactive violence which was the natural consequence of an effort to
resist them. The prudent apprehensions, therefore, of these Noble Whigs
would have been much more usefully as well as honorably employed, in
mingling with, and moderating the proceedings of the friends of Liberty,
than in ministering fresh fuel to the zeal and vindictiveness of her
enemies. [Footnote: The case against these Noble Seceders is thus
spiritedly stated by Lord Moira:--

"I cannot ever sit in a cabinet with the Duke of Portland. He appears to
me to have done more injury to the Constitution and to the estimation of
the higher ranks in this country than any man on the political stage. By
his union with Mr. Pitt he has given it to be understood by the people,
that either all the constitutional charges which he and his friends for
so many years urged against Mr. Put were groundless, or that, being
solid, there was no difficulty in waving them when a convenient partition
of powers and emoluments was proposed. In either case the people must
infer that the constitutional principle which can be so played with is
unimportant, and that parliamentary professions are no security."
--_Letter from the Earl of Moira to Colonel M'Mahon, in 1797.
Parliamentary History_.]

It may be added, too, that in allowing themselves to be persuaded by
Burke, that the extinction of the ancient Noblesse of France portended
necessarily any danger to the English Aristocracy, these Noble persons
did injustice to the strength of their own order, and to the
characteristics by which it is proudly distinguished from every other
race of Nobility in Europe. Placed, as a sort of break-water, between the
People and the Throne, in a state of double responsibility to liberty on
one side, and authority on the other, the Aristocracy of England hold a
station which is dignified by its own great duties, and of which the
titles transmitted by their ancestors form the least important ornament.
Unlike the Nobility of other countries, where the rank and privileges of
the father are multiplied through his offspring, and equally elevate them
all above the level of the community, the very highest English Nobleman
must consent to be the father but of commoners. Thus, connected with the
class below him by private as well as public sympathies, he gives his
children to the People as hostages for the sincerity of his zeal in their
cause--while on the other hand, the People, in return for these pledges
of the Aristocracy, sends a portion of its own elements aloft into that
higher region, to mingle with its glories and assert their claim to a
share in its power. By this mutual transfusion an equilibrium is
preserved, like that which similar processes maintain in the natural
world, and while a healthy, popular feeling circulates through the
Aristocracy, a sense of their own station in the scale elevates the
People.

To tremble for the safety of a Nobility so constituted, without much
stronger grounds for alarm than appear to have existed in 1793, was an
injustice not only to that class itself, but the whole nation. The world
has never yet afforded an example, where this artificial distinction
between mankind has been turned to such beneficial account; and as no
monarchy can exist without such an order, so, in any other shape than
this, such an order is a burden and a nuisance. In England, so happy a
conformation of her Aristocracy is one of those fortuitous results which
time and circumstances have brought out in the long-tried experiment of
her Constitution; and, while there is no chance of its being ever again
attained in the Old World, there is but little, probability of its being
attempted in the New,--where the youthful nations now springing into
life, will, if they are wise, make the most of the free career before
them, and unencumbered with the costly trappings of feudalism, adopt,
like their northern neighbors, that form of government, whose simplicity
and cheapness are the best guarantees for its efficacy and purity.

In judging of the policy of Mr. Pitt, during the Revolutionary war, his
partisans, we know, laud it as having been the means of salvation to
England, while his opponents assert that it was only prevented by chance
from being her ruin--and though the event gives an appearance of triumph
to the former opinion, it by no means removes or even weakens the grounds
of the latter. During the first nine years of his administration, Mr.
Pitt was, in every respect, an able and most useful minister, and, "while
the sea was calm, showed mastership in floating." But the great events
that happened afterwards took him by surprise. When he came to look
abroad from his cabinet into the storm that was brewing through Europe,
the clear and enlarged view of the higher order of statesman was wanting.
Instead of elevating himself above the influence of the agitation and
alarm that prevailed, he gave way to it with the crowd of ordinary minds,
and even took counsel from the panic of others. The consequence was a
series of measures, violent at home and inefficient abroad--far short of
the mark where vigor was wanting, and beyond it, as often, where vigor
was mischievous.

When we are told to regard his policy as the salvation of the
country--when, (to use a figure of Mr. Dundas,) a _claim of salvage_
is made for him--it may be allowed us to consider a little the nature of
the measures by which this alleged salvation was achieved. If entering
into a great war without either consistency of plan, or preparation of
means, and with a total ignorance of the financial resources of the enemy
[Footnote: Into his erroneous calculations upon this point he is
supposed to have been led by Sir Francis D'Ivernois.]--if allowing one
part of the Cabinet to flatter the French Royalists, with the hope of
seeing the Bourbons restored to undiminished power, while the other part
acted, whenever an opportunity offered, upon the plan of dismembering
France for the aggrandizement of Austria, and thus, at once, alienated
Prussia at the very moment of subsidizing him, and lost the confidence of
all the Royalist party in France, [Footnote: Among other instances, the
Abbé Maury is reported to have said at Rome in a large company of his
countrymen--"Still we have one remedy--let us not allow France to be
divided--we have seen the partition of Poland we must all turn Jacobins
to preserve our country."] except the few who were ruined by English
assistance at Quiberon--if going to war in 1793 for the right of the
Dutch to a river, and so managing it that in 1794 the Dutch lost their
whole Seven Provinces--if lavishing more money upon failures than the
successes of a century had cost, and supporting this profusion by schemes
of finance, either hollow and delusive, like the Sinking Fund, or
desperately regardless of the future, like the paper issues--if driving
Ireland into rebellion by the perfidious recall of Lord Fitzwilliam, and
reducing England to two of the most, fearful trials, that a nation,
depending upon Credit and a navy, could encounter, the stoppage of her
Bank and a mutiny in her fleet--if, finally, floundering on from effort
to effort against France, and then dying upon the ruins of the last
Coalition he could muster against her--if all this betokens a wise and
able minister, then is Mr. Pitt most amply entitled to that name;--then
are the lessons of wisdom to be read, like Hebrew, backward, and waste
and rashness and systematic failure to be held the only true means of
saving a country.

Had even success, by one of those anomalous accidents, which sometimes
baffle the best founded calculations of wisdom, been the immediate result
of this long monotony of error, it could not, except with those to whom
the event is every thing--"_Eventus, stultorum magister_"
[Footnote: A saying of the wise Fabius.]--reflect back merit upon the
means by which it was achieved, or, by a retrospective miracle, convert
that into wisdom, which chance had only saved from the worst consequences
of folly. Just as well might we be called upon to pronounce Alchemy a
wise art, because a perseverance in its failures and reveries had led by
accident to the discoveries of Chemistry. But even this sanction of
good-luck was wanting to the unredeemed mistakes of Mr. Pitt. During the
eight years that intervened between his death and the termination of the
contest, the adoption of a far wiser policy was forced upon his more
tractable pupils; and the only share that his measures can claim in the
successful issue of the war, is that of having produced the grievance
that was then abated--of having raised up the power opposed to him to the
portentous and dizzy height, from which it then fell by the giddiness of
its own elevation, [Footnote:

--"_summisque negatum
Stare din_."

LUCAN.] and by the reaction, not of the Princes, but the People of Europe
against its yoke.

What would have been the course of affairs, both foreign and domestic,
had Mr. Fox--as was, at one time, not improbable--been the Minister
during this period, must be left to that superhuman knowledge, which the
schoolmen call "_media scientia_," and which consists in knowing all
that would have happened, had events been otherwise than they have been.
It is probable that some of the results would not have been so different
as the respective principles of Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox might naturally lead
us, on the first thought, to assert. If left to himself, there is little
doubt that the latter, from the simple and fearless magnanimity of his
nature, would have consulted for the public safety with that moderation
which true courage inspires; and that, even had it been necessary to
suspend the Constitution for a season, he would have known how to veil
the statue of Liberty, [Footnote: "_Il y a des cas ou il faut mettre
pour un moment un voile sur la Liberté, comme l'on cache les statues des
dieux_."--MONTESQUIEU, liv. xii. chap. 20.] without leaving like his
rival, such marks of mutilation on its limbs. But it is to be recollected
that he would have had to encounter, in his own ranks, the very same
patrician alarm, which could even to Mr. Pitt give an increase of
momentum against liberty, and which the possession of power would have
rendered but more sensitive and arbitrary. Accustomed, too, as he had
long been, to yield to the influence of Burke, it would have required
more firmness than habitually belonged to Mr. Fox, to withstand the
persevering impetuosity of such a counsellor, or keep the balance of his
mind unshaken by those stupendous powers, which, like the horses of the
Sun breaking out of the ecliptic, carried every thing they seized upon,
so splendidly astray:--


"_quaque impetus egit,
Hac sine lege ruunt, altoque sub aethere fixis
Incursant stellis, rapiuntque per avia currum_."

Where'er the impulse drives, they burst away
In lawless grandeur;--break into the array
Of the fix'd stars, and bound and blaze along
Their devious course, magnificently wrong!


Having hazarded these general observations, upon the views and conduct of
the respective parties of England, during the Crusade now begun against
the French people, I shall content myself with briefly and cursorily
noticing the chief questions upon which Mr. Sheridan distinguished
himself, in the course of the parliamentary campaigns that followed. The
sort of _guerilla_ warfare, which he and the rest of the small band
attached to Mr. Fox carried on, during this period, against the invaders
of the Constitution, is interesting rather by its general character than
its detail; for in these, as usual, the episodes of party personality are
found to encroach disproportionately on the main design, and the grandeur
of the cause, as viewed at a distance, becomes diminished to our
imaginations by too near an approach. Englishmen, however, will long look
back to that crisis with interest; and the names of Fox, of Sheridan, and
of Grey will be affectionately remembered, when that sort of false
elevation, which party-feeling now gives to the reputations of some who
were opposed to them, shall have subsided to its due level, or been
succeeded by oblivion. They who act against the general sympathies of
mankind, however they may be artificially buoyed up for the moment, have
the current against them in the long run of fame; while the reputation of
those, whose talents have been employed upon the popular and generous
side of human feelings, receives, through all time, an accelerating
impulse from the countless hearts that go with it in its course. Lord
Chatham, even now, supersedes his son in fame, and will leave him at an
immeasurable distance with posterity.

Of the events of the private life of Mr. Sheridan, during this stormy
part of his political career, there remain but few memorials among his
papers. As an illustration, however, of his love of betting--the only
sort of gambling in which he ever indulged--the following curious list
of his wagers for the year is not unamusing:--

_"25th May, 1793._--Mr. Sheridan bets Gen. Fitzpatrick one hundred
guineas to fifty guineas, that within two years from this date some
measure is adopted in Parliament which shall be (_bonâ fide_)
considered as the adoption of a Parliamentary Reform.

"_29th January, 1793._--Mr. S. bets Mr. Boothby Clopton five hundred
guineas, that there is a Reform in the Representation of the people of
England within three years from the date hereof.

"_29th January, 1793_.--Mr. S. bets Mr. Hardy one hundred guineas to
fifty guineas, that Mr. W. Windham does not represent Norwich at the next
general election.

"_29th January, 1793._--Mr. S. bets Gen. Fitzpatrick fifty guineas,
that a corps of British troops are sent to Holland within two months of
the date hereof.

"_18th March, 1793._--Mr. S. bets Lord Titchfield two hundred
guineas, that the D. of Portland is at the head of an Administration on
or before the 18th of March, 1796; Mr. Fox to decide whether any place
the Duke may then fill shall _bonâ fide_ come within the meaning of
this bet.

"_25th March, 1793_.--Mr. S. bets Mr. Hardy one hundred guineas,
that the three per cent. consols are as high this day twelvemonth as at
the date hereof.

"Mr. S. bets Gen. Tarleton one hundred guineas to fifty guineas, that Mr.
Pitt is first Lord of the Treasury on the 28th of May, 1795.--Mr. S. bets
Mr. St. A. St. John fifteen guineas to five guineas, ditto.--Mr. S. bets
Lord Sefton one hundred and forty guineas to forty guineas, ditto.

_"19th March, 1793_.--Lord Titchfield and Lord W. Russell bet Mr. S.
three hundred guineas to two hundred guineas, that Mr. Pitt is first Lord
of the Treasury on the 19th of March, 1795.

"_18th March, 1793_.--Lord Titchfield bets Mr. S. twenty-five
guineas to fifty guineas, that Mr. W. Windham represents Norwich at the
next general election."

As a sort of moral supplement to this strange list, and one of those
insights into character and conduct which it is the duty of a biographer
to give, I shall subjoin a letter, connected evidently with one of the
above speculations:--

"SIR,

"I am very sorry that I have been so circumstanced as to have been
obliged to disappoint you respecting the payment of the five hundred
guineas: when I gave the draughts on Lord * * I had every reason to be
assured he would accept them, as * * had also. I enclose you, as you will
see by his desire, the letter in which he excuses his not being able to
pay me this part of a larger sum he owes me, and I cannot refuse him any
time he requires, however inconvenient to me. I also enclose you two
draughts accepted by a gentleman from whom the money will be due to me,
and on whose punctuality I can rely. I extremely regret that I cannot at
this juncture command the money.

"At the same time that I regret your being put to any inconvenience by
this delay, I cannot help adverting to the circumstance which perhaps
misled me into the expectation that you would not unwillingly allow me
any reasonable time I might want for the payment of this bet. The
circumstance I mean, however discreditable the plea, is the total
inebriety of some of the party, particularly of myself, when I made this
preposterous bet. I doubt not you will remember having yourself observed
on this circumstance to a common friend the next day, with an intimation
that you should not object to being off; and for my part, when I was
informed that I had made such a bet and for such a sum,--the first, such
folly on the face of it on my part, and the latter so out of my
practice,--I certainly should have proposed the cancelling it, but that,
from the intimation imparted to me, I hoped the proposition might come
from you.

"I hope I need not for a moment beg you not to imagine that I am now
alluding to these circumstances as the slightest invalidation of your
due. So much the contrary, that I most perfectly admit that from your not
having heard any thing further from me on the subject, and especially
after I might have heard that if I desired it the bet might be off, you
had every reason to conclude that I was satisfied with the wager, and
whether made in wine or not, was desirous of abiding by it. And this was
further confirmed by my receiving soon after from you 100_l_, on
another bet won by me.

"Having, I think, put this point very fairly, I again repeat that my only
motive for alluding to the matter was, as some explanation of my seeming
dilatoriness, which certainly did in part arise from always conceiving
that, whenever I should state what was my real wish the day after the bet
was made, you would be the more disposed to allow a little time;--the
same statement admitting, as it must, the bet to be as clearly and as
fairly won as possible; in short, as if I had insisted on it myself the
next morning.

"I have said more perhaps on the subject than can be necessary; but I
should regret to appear negligent to an application for a just claim.

"I have the honor to be,

"Sir,

"Your obedient servant,

"_Hertford St. Feb. 26._

"R. B. SHERIDAN."

Of the public transactions of Sheridan at this time, his speeches are the
best record. To them, therefore, I shall henceforward principally refer
my readers,--premising, that though the reports of his latter speeches
are somewhat better, in general, than those of his earlier displays, they
still do great injustice to his powers, and exhibit little more than the
mere _Torso_ of his eloquence, curtailed of all those accessories
that lent motion and beauty to its form. The attempts to give the
terseness of his wit particularly fail, and are a strong illustration of
what he himself once said to Lord * *. That Nobleman, who among his many
excellent qualities does not include a very lively sense of humor, having
exclaimed, upon hearing some good anecdote from Sheridan, "I'll go and
tell that to our friend * *." Sheridan called him back instantly and
said, with much gravity, "For God's sake, don't, my dear * *: a joke is
no laughing matter in your mouth."

It is, indeed, singular, that all the eminent English orators--with the
exception of Mr. Burke and Mr. Windham--should have been so little
anxious for the correct transmission of their eloquence to posterity. Had
not Cicero taken more care of even his extemporaneous effusions, we
should have lost that masterly burst of the moment, to which the clemency
of Caesar towards Marcellus gave birth. The beautiful fragments we have
of Lord Chatham are rather traditional than recorded;--there are but two,
I believe, of the speeches of Mr. Pitt corrected by himself, those on the
Budget of 1792, and on the Union with Ireland;--Mr. Fox committed to
writing but one of his, namely, the tribute to the memory of the Duke of
Bedford;--and the only speech of Mr. Sheridan, that is known with
certainty to have passed under his own revision, was that which he made
at the opening of the following session, (1794,) in answer to Lord
Mornington.

In the course of the present year he took frequent opportunities of
expressing his disgust at that spirit of ferocity which had so deeply
disgraced the cause of the Revolution. So earnest was his interest in the
fate of the Royal Family of France, that, as appears from one of his
speeches, he drew up a paper on the subject, and transmitted it to the
republican rulers;--with the view, no doubt, of conveying to them the
feelings of the English Opposition, and endeavoring to avert, by the
influence of his own name and that of Mr. Fox, the catastrophe that
awaited those Royal victims of liberty. Of this interesting document I
cannot discover any traces.

In one of his answers to Burke on the subject of the French Revolution,
adverting to the charge of Deism and Atheism brought against the
republicans, he says,

"As an argument to the feelings and passions of men, the Honorable Member
had great advantages in dwelling on this topic; because it was a subject
which those who disliked everything that had the air of cant and
profession on the one hand, or of indifference on the other, found it
awkward to meddle with. Establishments, tests, and matters of that
nature, were proper objects of political discussion in that House, but
not general charges of Atheism and Deism, as pressed upon their
consideration by the Honorable Gentleman. Thus far, however, he would
say, and it was an opinion he had never changed or concealed, that,
although no man can command his conviction, he had ever considered a
deliberate disposition to make proselytes in infidelity as an
unaccountable depravity. Whoever attempted to pluck the belief or the
prejudice on this subject, style it which he would, from the bosom of one
man, woman, or child, committed a brutal outrage, the motive for which he
had never been able to trace or conceive."

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