It is to be lamented that the biographers and eulogists of Richard Brinsley Sheridan should have suppressed some of the most creditable incidents of his variegated life, while his memory is disgraced by pretended friends and literary admirers.
These writers have raked up from his ashes, and exposed to public indignation, every failing of that great and gifted man:—so that, if their own productions were by any chance to become permanent, they would send him down to posterity as a witty, but low and dissipated sharper; or, in their very best colouring, as the most talented of mean and worthless mendicants. But Sheridan’s reputation will outlive all such attempts to obliterate it; while the ignorance of his libellers is conspicuous from their entire omission of some of the most interesting events of his career, at the same time that others are vouched for, which to my individual knowledge are gross misrepresentations.
Among the incidents that have been overlooked is one both extraordinary and melancholy, and forming an honourable comment on Mr. Sheridan’s public character. I was myself interested in the transaction;—and can give it on my own responsibility. I am, indeed, most anxious to rescue his memory from the rough hands which, in sketching their subject, have placed the mane of the lion upon the shoulders of a mountebank.
In speaking thus, I deeply regret that one of these biographers should be a man whom I esteem; and I regret it the more, since he has used poor Sheridan as a chopping-block, whereon to hack the character of the most illustrious person of the British empire, who (for the first time in his life, I believe) has been accused of pecuniary illiberality. A circumstance accidentally came to my knowledge to prove that charge the very reverse of truth. But an opportunity will be taken by me of observing still more explicitly on these friends of Mr. Sheridan.
At the general election of 1807, Mr. John Colclough, of Tintern Abbey, County Wexford, a near relative of mine, (and locum tenens of his elder-brother, Mr. Cæsar Colclough, who had been long resident on the continent,) declared himself for the second time candidate for Wexford county, which he had represented in the previous parliament. The Colclough estates were large, the freeholders thereon numerous, and devoted to the interest of their patriotic leader, whose uncle, Mr. John Grogan, of Johnstown Castle (also a relative of mine), possessed of a very large fortune and extensive tenantry, had united with his nephew and other most respectable and independent gentlemen of that county, to liberate its representation from the trammels of certain noblemen who had for many years usurped its domination. Mr. Colclough was determined to put the pride, spirit, and patriotism of the county to proof; and therefore, in the progress of the business, proposed Mr. Richard Brinsley Sheridan as joint-candidate with himself, declaring that he was authorised by the independent freeholders of the county to say, that they should feel the greatest gratification in being represented by so distinguished an ornament to the name of Irishman.
Mr. Colclough and Mr. Sheridan were therefore nominated on the one hand; and Mr. Alcock, supported by the interest of the influenced electors, on the other.
Never yet was any poll conducted by more resolute, active, and zealous partisans; but it is lamentable to add that they were equally intemperate as zealous. The ignis fatuus of patriotism had caught the mass of the population; tenants no longer obeyed the dictates of their absent landlords nor the menaces of tyrannic agents: no man could count on the votes of his former vassals. The hustings was thronged with crowds of tenantry, constitutionally breaking away from their shackles, and voting according to their principles of free agency for Sheridan,—a man known to them only by the celebrity of his talents. The poll proceeded:—the independent party was advancing fast to success; and had the election continued, there is little doubt that Mr. Sheridan would have been a representative for Wexford county. At this crisis occurred one of the most unfortunate and melancholy events on Irish record, and by which the contest was terminated—as if the untoward destiny of Sheridan withered every thing with which he came in contact.
Several tenants of a person who had given his interest to Mr. Alcock absolutely refused to vote for that gentleman, declaring that, at every risk, they would support Colclough and “the great Sheridan!” Mr. Alcock’s partisans perverted the free agency of these men into seduction on the part of Mr. Colclough: hence a feeling decidedly hostile was excited; the fierce zeal and frenzy of election partisanship burst into a flame; and Mr. Colclough was required to decline such votes, or to receive them at his peril.
Of course he disregarded this outrageous threat, and open war ensued. One party lost sight of reason;—both, of humanity; and it was determined, that before the opening of next morning’s poll, the candidates should decide, by single combat, the contested question, and (of course) the election itself. With what indignation and horror must such a resolution, at once assailing law, good morals, and decency, be now regarded! and how will the feeling of surprise increase from its being passed over with impunity!
Early on the eventful morning many hundred people assembled to witness the affair; and it will scarcely be believed that no less than eleven or twelve county magistrates stood by, passive spectators of the bloody scene which followed, without an effort, or apparently a wish, to stop the proceeding.