Even on the subject of the American war, which was now the important point that called forth all the resources of attack and defence on both sides, the co-operation of Mr. Sheridan appears to have been but rare and casual. The only occasions, indeed, connected with this topic upon which I can trace him as having spoken at any length, were the charges brought forward by Mr. Fox against the Admiralty for their mismanagement of the naval affairs of 1781, and the Resolution of censure on His Majesty's Ministers moved by Lord John Cavendish. His remarks in the latter debate upon the two different sets of opinions, by which (as by the double soul, imagined in Xenophon) the speaking and the voting of Mr. Rigby were actuated, are very happy:—
"The Right Hon. Gentleman, however, had acted in this day's debate with perfect consistency. He had assured the House that he thought the Noble Lord ought to resign his office; and yet he would give his vote for his remaining in it. In the same manner he had long declared, that he thought the American war ought to be abandoned; yet had uniformly given his vote for its continuance. He did not mean, however, to insinuate any motives for such conduct;—he believed the Right Hon. Gentleman to have been sincere; he believed that, as a member of Parliament, as a Privy Councillor, as a private gentleman, he had always detested the American war as much as any man; but that he had never been able to persuade the Paymaster that it was a bad war; and unfortunately, in whatever character he spoke, it was the Paymaster who always voted in that House."
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."