Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Volume I Part 32

"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 a.s.sure 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 ma.n.u.scripts:--

"ADVERTIs.e.m.e.nT 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 subst.i.tute 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 a.s.serted, 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 Dictators.h.i.+p, 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 Dictators.h.i.+p in his own person, it was, at the worst, such a Dictators.h.i.+p 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 const.i.tuents, _"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 a.s.sumption (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 s.h.i.+eld 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 const.i.tutionally 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 pa.s.s 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 Const.i.tution, 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 c.u.m 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 pa.s.sages from the same Sacred Book, which (as the Reporter gravely a.s.sures 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 circ.u.mstance, 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.suredly 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 doc.u.ment, 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 t.i.tle 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 s.p.a.ce 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 circ.u.mstances 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 a.s.sumed 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, p.r.o.nounced it would be) one of his best and n.o.blest; 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 unconst.i.tutional 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.