At the commencement of the proceedings against Hastings, an occurrence, immediately connected with them, had brought Sheridan and his early friend Halhed together, under circumstances as different as well can be imagined from those under which they had parted as boys. The distance, indeed, that had separated them in the interval was hardly greater than the divergence that had taken place in their pursuits; for, while Sheridan had been converted into a senator and statesman, the lively Halhed had become an East Indian Judge, and a learned commentator on the Gentoo Laws. Upon the subject, too, on which they now met, their views and interests were wholly opposite,—Sheridan being the accuser of Hastings, and Halhed his friend. The following are the public circumstances that led to their interview.
In one of the earliest debates on the Charges against the Governor- general, Major Scott having asserted that, when Mr. Fox was preparing his India Bill, overtures of accommodation had been made, by his authority, to Mr. Hastings, added, that he (Major Scott) "entertained no doubt that, had Mr. Hastings then come home, he would have heard nothing of all this calumny, and all these serious accusations." Mr. Fox, whom this charge evidently took by surprise, replied that he was wholly ignorant of any such overtures, and that "whoever made, or even hinted at such an offer, as coming from him, did it without the smallest shadow of authority." By an explanation, a few days after, from Mr. Sheridan, it appeared that he was the person who had taken the step alluded to by Major Scott. His interference, however, he said, was solely founded upon an opinion which he had himself formed with respect to the India Bill,— namely, that it would be wiser, on grounds of expediency, not to make it retrospective in any of its clauses. In consequence of this opinion, he had certainly commissioned a friend to inquire of Major Scott, whether, if Mr. Hastings were recalled, he would come home;—but "that there had been the most distant idea of bartering with Mr. Hastings for his support of the Indian Bill, he utterly denied." In conclusion, he referred, for the truth of what he had now stated, to Major Scott, who instantly rising, acknowledged that, from inquiries which he had since made of the gentleman deputed to him by Mr. Sheridan on the occasion, he was ready to bear testimony to the fairness of the statement just submitted to the House, and to admit his own mistake in the interpretation which he had put on the transaction.
It was in relation to this misunderstanding that the interview took place in the year 1786 between Sheridan and Halhed—the other persons present being Major Scott and Doctor Parr, from whom I heard the circumstance. The feelings of this venerable scholar towards "iste Scotus" (as he calls Major Scott in his Preface to Bellendenus) were not, it is well known, of the most favorable kind; and he took the opportunity of this interview to tell that gentleman fully what he thought of him:—"for ten minutes," said the Doctor, in describing his aggression, "I poured out upon him hot, scalding abuse—'twas lava, Sir!"
Among the other questions that occupied the attention of Mr. Sheridan during this session, the most important were the Commercial Treaty with France, and the Debts of the Prince of Wales.
The same erroneous views by which the opposition to the Irish Commercial Propositions was directed, still continued to actuate Mr. Fox and his friends in their pertinacious resistance to the Treaty with France;—a measure which reflects high honor upon the memory of Mr. Pitt, as one of the first efforts of a sound and liberal policy to break through that system of restriction and interference, which had so long embarrassed the flow of international commerce.
The wisdom of leaving trade to find its own way into those channels which the reciprocity of wants established among mankind opens to it, is one of those obvious truths that have lain long on the highways of knowledge, before practical statesmen would condescend to pick them up. It has been shown, indeed, that the sound principles of commerce which have at last forced their way from the pages of thinking men into the councils of legislators, were more than a hundred years since promulgated by Sir Dudley North; [Footnote: McCulloch's Lectures on Political Economy]—and in the Querist of Bishop Berkeley may be found the outlines of all that the best friends not only of free trade but of free religion would recommend to the rulers of Ireland at the present day. Thus frequently does Truth, before the drowsy world is prepared for her, like
"The nice Morn on the Indian steep,
From her cabin'd loophole peep."
Though Mr. Sheridan spoke frequently in the course of the discussions, he does not appear to have, at any time, encountered the main body of the question, but to have confined himself chiefly to a consideration of the effects which the treaty would have upon the interests of Ireland;— a point which he urged with so much earnestness, as to draw down upon him from one of the speakers the taunting designation of "Self-appointed Representative of Ireland."
Mr. Fox was the most active antagonist of the Treaty; and his speeches on the subject may be counted among those feats of prowess, with which the chivalry of Genius sometimes adorns the cause of Error. In founding, as he did, his chief argument against commercial intercourse upon the "natural enmity" between the two countries, he might have referred, it is true, to high Whig authority:—"The late Lord Oxford told me," says Lord Bolingbroke, "that my Lord Somers being pressed, I know not on what occasion or by whom, on the unnecessary and ruinous continuation of the war, instead of giving reasons to show the necessity of it, contented himself to reply that he had been bred up in a hatred to France."—But no authority, however high, can promote a prejudice into a reason, or conciliate any respect for this sort of vague, traditional hostility, which is often obliged to seek its own justification in the very mischiefs which itself produces. If Mr. Fox ever happened to peruse the praises, which his Antigallican sentiments on this occasion procured for him, from the tedious biographer of his rival, Mr. Gifford, he would have suspected, like Phocion, that he must have spoken something unworthy of himself, to have drawn down upon his head a panegyric from such a quarter.
Another of Mr. Fox's arguments against entering into commercial relations with France, was the danger lest English merchants, by investing their capital in foreign speculations, should become so entangled with the interests of another country as to render them less jealous than they ought to be of the honor of their own, and less ready to rise in its defence, when wronged or insulted. But, assuredly, a want of pugnacity is not the evil to be dreaded among nations—still less between two, whom the orator had just represented as inspired by a "natural enmity" against each other. He ought rather, upon this assumption, to have welcomed the prospect of a connection, which, by transfusing and blending their commercial interests, and giving each a stake in the prosperity of the other, would not only soften away the animal antipathy attributed to them, but, by enlisting selfishness on the side of peace and amity, afford the best guarantee against wanton warfare, that the wisdom of statesmen or philosophers has yet devised.