"Cavendish-Square, Sunday night,
"I shall be in Stafford in the course of next week, and if Your Majesty does not renew our old alliance I shall never again have faith in any potentate on earth.
"Yours very sincerely,
"Mr. John K.
"R. B. SHERIDAN."
The two attempts that were made in the course of the year 1812—the one, on the cessation of the Regency Restrictions, and the other after the assassination of Mr. Perceval,—to bring the Whigs into official relations with the Court, were, it is evident, but little inspired on either side, with the feelings likely to lead to such a result. It requires but a perusal of the published correspondence in both cases to convince us that, at the bottom of all these evolutions of negotiation, there was anything but a sincere wish that the object to which they related should be accomplished. The Maréchal Bassompiere was not more afraid of succeeding in his warfare, when he said, "Je crois que nous serons assez fous pour prendre la Rochelle," than was one of the parties, at least, in these negotiations, of any favorable turn that might inflict success upon its overtures. Even where the Court, as in the contested point of the Household, professed its readiness to accede to the surrender so injudiciously demanded of it, those who acted as its discretionary organs knew too well the real wishes in that quarter, and had been too long and faithfully zealous in their devotion to those wishes to leave any fear that advantage would be taken of the concession. But, however high and chivalrous was the feeling with which Lord Moira, on this occasion, threw himself into the breach for his Royal Master, the service of Sheridan, though flowing partly from the same zeal, was not, I grieve to say, of the same clear and honorable character.
Lord Yarmouth, it is well known, stated in the House of Commons that he had communicated to Mr. Sheridan the intention of the Household to resign, with the view of having that intention conveyed to Lord Grey and Lord Grenville, and thus removing the sole ground upon which these Noble Lords objected to the acceptance of office. Not only, however, did Sheridan endeavor to dissuade the Noble Vice-Chamberlain from resigning, but with an unfairness of dealing which admits, I own, of no vindication, he withheld from the two leaders of Opposition the intelligence thus meant to be conveyed to them; and, when questioned by Mr. Tierney as to the rumored intentions of the Household to resign, offered to bet five hundred guineas that there was no such step in contemplation.
In this conduct, which he made but a feeble attempt to explain, and which I consider as the only indefensible part of his whole public life, he was, in some degree, no doubt, influenced by personal feelings against the two Noble Lords, whom his want of fairness on the occasion was so well calculated to thwart and embarrass. But the main motive of the whole proceeding is to be found in his devoted deference to what he knew to be the wishes and feelings of that Personage, who had become now, more than ever, the mainspring of all his movements,—whose spell over him, in this instance, was too strong for even his sense of character; and to whom he might well have applied the words of one of his own beautiful songs—
"Friends, fortune, fame itself I'd lose,
To gain one smile from thee!"
So fatal, too often, are Royal friendships, whose attraction, like the loadstone-rock in Eastern fable, that drew the nails out of the luckless ship that came near it, steals gradually away the strength by which character is held together, till, at last, it loosens at all points, and falls to pieces, a wreck!