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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




In showing that the Nabob was driven to this robbery of his relatives by
other considerations than those of the pretended rebellion, which was
afterwards conjured up by Mr. Hastings to justify it, he says,--

"The fact is, that through all his defences--through all his various
false suggestions--through all these various rebellions and
disaffections, Mr. Hastings never once lets go this plea--of
extinguishable right in the Nabob. He constantly represents the seizing
the treasures as a resumption of a right which he could not part
with;--as if there were literally something in the Koran, that made it
criminal in a true Mussulman to keep his engagements with his relations,
and impious in a son to abstain from plundering his mother. I do gravely
assure your Lordships that there is no such doctrine in the Koran, and no
such principle makes a part in the civil or municipal jurisprudence of
that country. Even after these Princesses had been endeavoring to
dethrone the Nabob and to extirpate the English, the only plea the Nabob
ever makes, is his right under the Mahometan law; and the truth is, he
appears never to have heard any other reason, and I pledge myself to make
it appear to Your Lordships, however extraordinary it may be, that not
only had the Nabob never heard of the rebellion till the moment of
seizing the palace, but, still further, that he never heard of it at
all--that this extraordinary rebellion, which was as notorious as the
rebellion of 1745 in London, was carefully concealed from those two
parties--the Begums who plotted it, and the Nabob who was to be the
victim of it.

"The existence of this rebellion was not the secret, but the notoriety of
it was the secret; it was a rebellion which had for its object the
destruction of no human creature but those who planned it;--it was a
rebellion which, according to Mr. Middleton's expression, no man, either
horse or foot, ever marched to quell. The Chief Justice was the only man
who took the field against it,--the force against which it was raised,
instantly withdrew to give it elbow-room,--and, even then, it was a
rebellion which perversely showed itself in acts of hospitality to the
Nabob whom it was to dethrone, and to the English whom it was to
extirpate;--it was a rebellion plotted by two feeble old women, headed by
two eunuchs, and suppressed by an affidavit."

The acceptance, or rather exaction, of the private present of £100,000 is
thus animadverted upon:

"My Lords, such was the distressed situation of the Nabob about a
twelvemonth before Mr. Hastings met him at Chunar. It was a twelvemonth,
I say, after this miserable scene--a mighty period in the progress of
British rapacity--it was (if the Counsel will) after some natural
calamities had aided the superior vigor of British violence and
rapacity--it was after the country had felt other calamities besides the
English--it was after the angry dispensations of Providence had, with a
progressive severity of chastisement, visited the land with a famine one
year, and with a Col. Hannay the next--it was after he, this Hannay, had
returned to retrace the steps of his former ravages--it was after he and
his voracious crew had come to plunder ruins which himself had made, and
to glean from desolation the little that famine had spared, or rapine
overlooked;--_then_ it was that this miserable bankrupt prince
marching through his country, besieged by the clamors of his starving
subjects, who cried to him for protection through their cages--meeting
the curses of some of his subjects, and the prayers of others--with
famine at his heels, and reproach following him,--then it was that this
Prince is represented as exercising this act of prodigal bounty to the
very man whom he here reproaches--to the very man whose policy had
extinguished his power, and whose creatures had desolated his country. To
talk of a free-will gift! it is audacious and ridiculous to name the
supposition. It was _not_ a free-will gift. What was it then? was it
a bribe? or was it extortion? I shall prove it was both--it was an act of
gross bribery and of rank extortion."

Again he thus adverts to this present:--

"The first thing he does is, to leave Calcutta, in order to go to the
relief of the distressed Nabob. The second thing, is to take 100,000_l_
from that distressed Nabob on account of the distressed Company. And the
third thing is to ask of the distressed Company this very same sum on
account of the distresses of Mr. Hastings. There never were three
distresses that seemed so little reconcilable with one another."

Anticipating the plea of state-necessity, which might possibly be set up
in defence of the measures of the Governor-General, he breaks out into
the following rhetorical passage:--

"State necessity! no, my Lords; that imperial tyrant, _State
Necessity_, is yet a generous despot,--bold is his demeanor, rapid his
decisions, and terrible his grasp. But what he does, my Lords, he dares
avow, and avowing, scorns any other justification, than the great motives
that placed the iron sceptre in his hand. But a quibbling, pilfering,
prevaricating State-Necessity, that tries to skulk behind the skirts of
Justice;--a State-Necessity that tries to steal a pitiful justification
from whispered accusations and fabricated rumors. No, my Lords, that is
no State Necessity;--tear off the mask, and you see coarse, vulgar
avarice,--you see speculation, lurking under the gaudy disguise, and
adding the guilt of libelling the public honor to its own private fraud.

"My Lords, I say this, because I am sure the Managers would make every
allowance that state-necessity could claim upon any great emergency. If
any great man in bearing the arms of this country;--if any Admiral,
bearing the vengeance and the glory of Britain to distant coasts, should
be compelled to some rash acts of violence, in order, perhaps, to give
food to those who are shedding their blood for Britain;--if any great
General, defending some fortress, barren itself, perhaps, but a pledge of
the pride, and, with the pride, of the power of Britain; if such a man
were to * * * while he himself was * * at the top, like an eagle besieged
in its imperial nest; [Footnote: The Reporter, at many of these passages,
seems to have thrown aside his pen in despair.]--would the Commons of
England come to accuse or to arraign such acts of state-necessity? No."

In describing that swarm of English pensioners and placemen, who were
still, in violation of the late purchased treaty, left to prey on the
finances of the Nabob, he says,--

"Here we find they were left, as heavy a weight upon the Nabob as
ever,--left there with as keen an appetite, though not so clamorous. They
were reclining on the roots and shades of that spacious tree, which their
predecessors had stripped branch and bough--watching with eager eyes the
first budding of a future prosperity, and of the opening harvest which
they considered as the prey of their perseverance and rapacity."

We have in the close of the following passage, a specimen of that lofty
style, in which, as if under the influence of Eastern associations,
almost all the Managers of this Trial occasionally indulged: [Footnote:
Much of this, however, is to be set down to the gratuitous bombast of the
Reporter. Mr. Fox, for instance, is made to say, "Yes, my Lords, happy is
it for the world, that the penetrating gaze of Providence searches after
man, and in the dark den where he has stifled the remonstrances of
conscience darts his compulsatory ray, that, bursting the secrecy of
guilt, drives the criminal frantic to confession and expiation."
_History of the Trial._--Even one of the Counsel, Mr. Dallas, is
represented as having caught this Oriental contagion, to such a degree as
to express himself in the following manner:--"We are now, however, (said
the Counsel,) advancing from the star-light of Circumstance to the
day-light of Discovery: the sun of Certainty is melting the darkness,
and--we are arrived at facts admitted by both parties!"]--

"I do not mean to say that Mr. Middleton had _direct_ instructions
from Mr. Hastings,--that he told him to go and give that fallacious
assurance to the Nabob,--that he had that order _under his hand_.
No, but in looking attentively over Mr. Middleton's correspondence, you
will find him say, upon a more important occasion, 'I don't expect your
public authority for this;--it is enough if you but _hint_ your
pleasure.' He knew him well; he could interpret every nod and motion of
that head; he understood the glances of that eye which sealed the
perdition of nations, and at whose throne Princes waited, in pale
expectation, for their fortune or their doom."

The following is one of those labored passages, of which the orator
himself was perhaps most proud, but in which the effort to be eloquent is
too visible, and the effect, accordingly, falls short of the pretension:--

"You see how Truth--empowered by that will which gives a giant's nerve to
an infant's arm--has burst the monstrous mass of fraud that has
endeavored to suppress it.--It calls now to Your Lordships, in the weak
but clear tone of that Cherub, Innocence, whose voice is more persuasive
than eloquence, more convincing than argument, whose look is
supplication, whose tone is conviction,--it calls upon you for redress,
it calls upon you for vengeance upon the oppressor, and points its
heaven-directed hand to the detested, but unrepenting author of its
wrongs!"

His description of the desolation brought upon some provinces of Oude by
the misgovernment of Colonel Hannay, and of the insurrection at
Goruckpore against that officer in consequence, is, perhaps, the most
masterly portion of the whole speech:--

"If we could suppose a person to have come suddenly into the country
unacquainted with any circumstances that had passed since the days of
Sujah ul Dowlah, he would naturally ask--what cruel hand has wrought this
wide desolation, what barbarian foe has invaded the country, has
desolated its fields, depopulated its villages? He would ask, what
disputed succession, civil rage, or frenzy of the inhabitants, had
induced them to act in hostility to the words of God, and the beauteous
works of man? He would ask what religious zeal or frenzy had added to the
mad despair and horrors of war? The ruin is unlike any thing that appears
recorded in any age; it looks like neither the barbarities of men, nor
the judgments of vindictive heaven. There is a waste of desolation, as if
caused by fell destroyers, never meaning to return and making but a short
period of their rapacity. It looks as if some fabled monster had made its
passage through the country, whose pestiferous breath had blasted more
than its voracious appetite could devour."

"If there had been any men in the country, who had not their hearts and
souls so subdued by fear, as to refuse to speak the truth at all upon
such a subject, they would have told him, there had been no war since the
time of Sujah ul Dowlah,--tyrant, indeed, as he was, but then deeply
regretted by his subjects--that no hostile blow of any enemy had been
struck in that land--that there had been no disputed succession--no civil
war--no religious frenzy. But that these were the tokens of British
friendship, the marks left by the embraces of British allies--more
dreadful than the blows of the bitterest enemy. They would tell him that
these allies had converted a prince into a slave, to make him the
principal in the extortion upon his subjects;--that their rapacity
increased in proportion as the means of supplying their avarice
diminished; that they made the sovereign pay as if they had a right to an
increased price, because the labor of extortion and plunder increased. To
such causes, they would tell him, these calamities were owing.

"Need I refer Your Lordships to the strong testimony of Major Naylor when
he rescued Colonel Hannay from their hands--where you see that this
people, born to submission and bent to most abject subjection--that even
they, in whose meek hearts injury had never yet begot resentment, nor
even despair bred courage--that _their_ hatred, _their_
abhorrence of Colonel Hannay was such that they clung round him by
thousands and thousands;--that when Major Naylor rescued him, they
refused life from the hand that could rescue Hannay;--that they nourished
this desperate consolation, that by their death they should at least thin
the number of wretches who suffered by his devastation and extortion. He
says that, when he crossed the river, he found the poor wretches
quivering upon the parched banks of the polluted river, encouraging their
blood to flow, and consoling themselves with the thought, that it would
not sink into the earth, but rise to the common God of humanity, and cry
aloud for vengeance on their destroyers!--This warm description--which is
no declamation of mine, but founded in actual fact, and in fair, clear
proof before Your Lordships--speaks powerfully what the cause of these
oppressions were, and the perfect justness of those feelings that were
occasioned by them. And yet, my Lords, I am asked to prove _why_
these people arose in such concert:--'there must have been machinations,
forsooth, and the Begums' machinations, to produce all this!'--Why did
they rise!--Because they were people in human shape; because patience
under the detested tyranny of man is rebellion to the sovereignty of God;
because allegiance to that Power that gives us the _forms_ of men
commands us to maintain the _rights_ of men. And never yet was this
truth dismissed from the human heart--never in any time, in any
age--never in any clime, where rude man ever had any social feeling, or
where corrupt refinement had subdued all feelings,--never was this one
unextinguishable truth destroyed from the heart of man, placed, as it is,
in the core and centre of it by his Maker, that man was not made the
property of man; that human power is a trust for human benefit and that
when it is abused, revenge becomes justice, if not the bounden duty of
the injured! These, my Lords, were the causes why these people rose."

Another passage in the second day's speech is remarkable, as exhibiting a
sort of tourney of intellect between Sheridan and Burke, and in that
field of abstract speculation, which was the favorite arena of the
latter. Mr. Burke had, in opening the prosecution, remarked, that
prudence is a quality incompatible with vice, and can never be
effectively enlisted in its cause:--"I never (said he) knew a man who was
bad, fit for _service_ that was good. There is always some
disqualifying ingredient, mixing and spoiling the compound. The man seems
paralytic on that side, his muscles there have lost their very tone and
character--they cannot move. In short, the accomplishment of any thing
good is a physical impossibility for such a man. There is decrepitude as
well as distortion: he could not, if he would, is not more certain than
that he would not, if he could." To this sentiment the allusions in the
following passage refer:--

"I am perfectly convinced that there is one idea, which must arise in
Your Lordships' minds as a subject of wonder,--how a person of Mr.
Hastings' reputed abilities can furnish such matter of accusation against
himself. For, it must be admitted that never was there a person who seems
to go so rashly to work, with such an arrogant appearance of contempt for
all conclusions, that may be deduced from what he advances upon the
subject. When he seems most earnest and laborious to defend himself, it
appears as if he had but one idea uppermost in his mind--a determination
not to care what he says, provided he keeps clear of fact. He knows that
truth must convict him, and concludes, _à converso_, that falsehood
will acquit him; forgetting that there must be some connection, some
system, some co-operation, or, otherwise, his host of falsities fall
without an enemy, self-discomfited and destroyed. But of this he never
seems to have had the slightest apprehension. He falls to work, an
artificer of fraud, against all the rules of architecture;--he lays his
ornamental work first, and his massy foundation at the top of it; and
thus his whole building tumbles upon his head. Other people look well to
their ground, choose their position, and watch whether they are likely to
be surprised there; but he, as if in the ostentation of his heart, builds
upon a precipice, and encamps upon a mine, from choice. He seems to have
no one actuating principle, but a steady, persevering resolution not to
speak the truth or to tell the fact.

"It is impossible almost to treat conduct of this kind with perfect
seriousness; yet I am aware that it ought to be more seriously accounted
for--because I am sure it has been a sort of paradox, which must have
struck Your Lordships, how any person having so many motives to
conceal--having so many reasons to dread detection--should yet go to work
so clumsily upon the subject. It is possible, indeed, that it may raise
this doubt--whether such a person is of sound mind enough to be a proper
object of punishment; or at least it may give a kind of confused notion,
that the guilt cannot be of so deep and black a grain, over which such a
thin veil was thrown, and so little trouble taken to avoid detection. I
am aware that, to account for this seeming paradox, historians, poets,
and even philosophers--at least of ancient times--have adopted the
superstitious solution of the vulgar, and said that the gods deprive men
of reason whom they devote to destruction or to punishment. But to
unassuming or unprejudiced reason, there is no need to resort to any
supposed supernatural interference; for the solution will be found in the
eternal rules that formed the mind of man, and gave a quality and nature
to every passion that inhabits in it.

"An Honorable friend of mine, who is now, I believe, near me,--a
gentleman, to whom I never can on any occasion refer without feelings of
respect, and, on this subject, without feelings of the most grateful
homage;--a gentleman, whose abilities upon this occasion, as upon some
former ones, happily for the glory of the age in which we live, are not
entrusted merely to the perishable eloquence of the day, but will live to
be the admiration of that hour when all of us are mute, and most of us
forgotten;--that Honorable gentleman has told you that Prudence, the
first of virtues, never can be used in the cause of vice. If, reluctant
and diffident, I might take such a liberty, I should express a doubt,
whether experience, observation, or history, will warrant us in fully
assenting to this observation. It is a noble and a lovely sentiment, my
Lords, worthy the mind of him who uttered it, worthy that proud disdain,
that generous scorn of the means and instruments of vice, which virtue
and genius must ever feel. But I should doubt whether we can read the
history of a Philip of Macedon, a Caesar, or a Cromwell, without
confessing, that there have been evil purposes, baneful to the peace and
to the rights of men, conducted--if I may not say, with prudence or with
wisdom--yet with awful craft and most successful and commanding subtlety.
If, however, I might make a distinction, I should say that it is the
proud attempt to mix a _variety_ of lordly crimes, that unsettles
the prudence of the mind, and breeds this distraction of the brain.

"_One_ master-passion, domineering in the breast, may win the
faculties of the understanding to advance its purpose, and to direct to
that object every thing that thought or human knowledge can effect; but,
to succeed, it must maintain a solitary despotism in the mind;--each
rival profligacy must stand aloof, or wait in abject vassalage upon its
throne. For, the Power, that has not forbad the entrance of evil passions
into man's mind, has, at least, forbad their union;--if they meet they
defeat their object, and their conquest, or their attempt at it, is
tumult. Turn to the Virtues--how different the decree! Formed to connect,
to blend, to associate, and to cooperate; bearing the same course, with
kindred energies and harmonious sympathy, each perfect in its own lovely
sphere, each moving in its wider or more contracted orbit, with
different, but concentering, powers, guided by the same influence of
reason, and endeavoring at the same blessed end--the happiness of the
individual, the harmony of the species, and the glory of the Creator. In
the Vices, on the other hand, it is the discord that insures the
defeat--each clamors to be heard in its own barbarous language; each
claims the exclusive cunning of the brain; each thwarts and reproaches
the other; and even while their fell rage assails with common hate the
peace and virtue of the world, the civil war among their own tumultuous
legions defeats the purpose of the foul conspiracy. These are the Furies
of the mind, my Lords, that unsettle the understanding; these are the
Furies, that destroy the virtue, Prudence,--while the distracted brain
and shivered intellect proclaim the tumult that is within, and bear their
testimonies, from the mouth of God himself, to the foul condition of the
heart."

The part of the Speech which occupied the Third Day (and which was
interrupted by the sudden indisposition of Mr. Sheridan) consists chiefly
of comments upon the affidavits taken before Sir Elijah Impey,--in which
the irrelevance and inconsistency of these documents is shrewdly exposed,
and the dryness of detail, inseparable from such a task, enlivened by
those light touches of conversational humor, and all that by-play of
eloquence of which Mr. Sheridan was such a consummate master. But it was
on the Fourth Day of the oration that he rose into his most ambitious
flights, and produced some of those dazzling bursts of declamation, of
which the traditional fame is most vividly preserved. Among the audience
of that day was Gibbon, and the mention of his name in the following
passage not only produced its effect at the moment, but, as connected
with literary anecdote, will make the passage itself long memorable.
Politics are of the day, but literature is of all time--and, though it
was in the power of the orator, in his brief moment of triumph, to throw
a lustre over the historian by a passing epithet, [Footnote: Gibbon
himself thought it an event worthy of record in his Memoirs. "Before my
departure from England (he says) I was present at the august spectacle of
Mr. Hastings's Trial in Westminster Hall. It was not my province to
absolve or condemn the Governor of India, but Mr. Sheridan's eloquence
demanded my applause, nor could I hear without emotion the personal
compliment which he paid me in the presence of the British nation. From
this display of genius, which blazed four successive days," &c &c.] the
name of the latter will, at the long run, pay back the honor with
interest. Having reprobated the violence and perfidy of the
Governor-General, in forcing the Nabob to plunder his own relatives and
friends, he adds:--

"I do say, that if you search the history of the world, you will not find
an act of tyranny and fraud to surpass this; if you read all past
histories, peruse the Annals of Tacitus, read the luminous page of
Gibbon, and all the ancient and modern writers, that have searched into
the depravity of former ages to draw a lesson for the present, you will
not find an act of treacherous, deliberate, cool cruelty that could
exceed this."

On being asked by some honest brother Whig, at the conclusion of the
Speech, how he came to compliment Gibbon with the epithet "luminous,"
Sheridan answered in a half whisper, "I said '_vo_luminous.'"

It is well known that the simile of the vulture and the lamb, which
occurs in the address of Rolla to the Peruvians, had been previously
employed by Mr. Sheridan, in this speech; and it showed a degree of
indifference to criticism,--which criticism, it must be owned, not
unfrequently deserves,--to reproduce before the public an image, so
notorious both from its application and its success. But, called upon, as
he was, to levy, for the use of that Drama, a hasty conscription of
phrases and images, all of a certain altitude and pomp, this veteran
simile, he thought, might be pressed into the service among the rest. The
passage of the Speech in which it occurs is left imperfect in the
Report:--

"This is the character of all the protection ever afforded to the allies
of Britain under the government of Mr. Hastings. They send their troops
to drain the produce of industry, to seize all the treasures, wealth, and
prosperity of the country, and then they call it Protection!--it is the
protection of the vulture to the lamb. * * *"

The following is his celebrated delineation of Filial Affection, to which
reference is more frequently made than to any other part of the
Speech;--though the gross inaccuracy of the printed Report has done its
utmost to belie the reputation of the original passage, or rather has
substituted a changeling to inherit its fame.

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