To a man at the time of life which Sheridan had now attained—four years beyond that period, at which Petrarch thought it decorous to leave off writing love-verses [Footnote: See his Epistle, "ad Posteritatem," where, after lamenting the many years which he had devoted to love, he adds: "Mox vero ad quadragesimum annum appropinquans, dum adhuc et caloris satis esset," &c.]—a union with a young and accomplished girl, ardently devoted to him, must have been like a renewal of his own youth; and it is, indeed, said by those who were in habits of intimacy with him at this period, that they had seldom seen his spirits in a state of more buoyant vivacity. He passed much of his time at the house of his father-in-law near Southampton;—and in sailing about with his lively bride on the Southampton river, (in a small cutter called the Phaedria, after the magic boat in the "Fairy Queen,") forgot for a while his debts, his theatre, and his politics. It was on one of these occasions that my friend Mr. Bowles, who was a frequent companion of his parties, [Footnote: Among other distinguished persons present at these excursions were Mr. Joseph Richardson, Dr. Howley, now Bishop of London, and Mrs. Wilmot, now Lady Dacre, a lady, whose various talents,—not the less delightful for being so feminine,—like the group of the Graces, reflect beauty on each other.] wrote the following verses, which were much admired, as they well deserved to be, by Sheridan, for the sweetness of their thoughts, and the perfect music of their rhythm:—
"Smooth went our boat upon the summer seas,
Leaving, (for so it seem'd.) the world behind,
Its cares, its sounds, its shadows: we reclin'd
Upon the sunny deck, heard but the breeze
That o'er us whispering pass'd or idly play'd
With the lithe flag aloft.—A woodland scene
On either side drew its slope line of green,
And hung the water's shining edge with shade.
Above the woods, Netley! thy ruins pale
Peer'd, as we pass'd; and Vecta's [1] azure hue
Beyond the misty castle [2] met the view;
Where in mid channel hung the scarce-seen sail.
So all was calm and sunshine as we went
Cheerily o'er the briny element.
Oh! were this little boat to us the world,
As thus we wander'd far from sounds of care,
Circled with friends and gentle maidens fair,
Whilst morning airs the waving pendant curl'd,
How sweet were life's long voyage, till in peace
We gain'd that haven still, where all things cease!"
[Footnote 1: Isle of Wight]
[Footnote 2: Kelshot Castle]
The events of this year but added fresh impetus to that reaction upon each other of the Government and the People, which such a system of misrule is always sure to produce. Among the worst effects, as I have already remarked, of the rigorous policy adopted by the Minister, was the extremity to which it drove the principles and language of Opposition, and that sanction which the vehement rebound against oppression of such influencing spirits as Fox and Sheridan seemed to hold out to the obscurer and more practical assertors of freedom. This was at no time more remarkable than in the present Session, during the discussion of those arbitrary measures, the Treason and Sedition Bills, when sparks were struck out, in the collision of the two principles, which the combustible state of public feeling at the moment rendered not a little perilous. On the motion that the House should resolve itself into a Committee upon the Treason Bill, Mr. Fox said, that "if Ministers were determined, by means of the corrupt influence they already possessed in the two Houses of Parliament, to pass these Bills, in violent opposition to the declared sense of the great majority of the nation, and they should be put in force with all their rigorous provisions,—if his opinion were asked by the people as to their obedience, he should tell them, that it was no longer a question of moral obligation and duty, but of prudence." Mr. Sheridan followed in the bold footsteps of his friend, and said, that "if a degraded and oppressed majority of the people applied to him, he would advise them to acquiesce in those bills only as long as resistance was imprudent." This language was, of course, visited with the heavy reprobation of the Ministry;—but their own partisans had already gone as great lengths on the side of absolute power, and it is the nature of such extremes to generate each other. Bishop Horsley had preached the doctrine of passive obedience in the House of Lords, asserting that "man's abuse of his delegated authority is to be borne with resignation, like any other of God's judgments; and that the opposition of the individual to the sovereign power is an opposition to God's providential arrangements." The promotion of the Right Reverend Prelate that followed, was not likely to abate his zeal in the cause of power; and, accordingly, we find him in the present session declaring, in his place in the House of Lords, that "the people have nothing to do with the laws but to obey them."
The government, too, had lately given countenance to writers, the absurd slavishness of whose doctrines would have sunk below contempt, but for such patronage. Among the ablest of them was Arthur Young,—one of those renegades from the cause of freedom, who, like the incendiary that set fire to the Temple with the flame he had stolen from its altar, turn the fame and the energies which they have acquired in defence of liberty against her. This gentleman, to whom his situation as Secretary to the Board of Agriculture afforded facilities for the circulation of his political heresies, did not scruple, in one of his pamphlets, roundly to assert, that unequal representation, rotten boroughs, long parliaments, extravagant courts, selfish Ministers, and corrupt majorities, are not only intimately interwoven with the practical freedom of England, but, in a great degree, the causes of it.
But the most active and notorious of these patronized advocates of the Court was Mr. John Reeves,—a person who, in his capacity of President of the Association against Republicans and Levellers, had acted as a sort of Sub-minister of Alarm to Mr. Burke. In a pamphlet, entitled "Thoughts on the English Government," which Mr. Sheridan brought under the notice of the House, as a libel on the Constitution, this pupil of the school of Filmer advanced the startling doctrine that the Lords and Commons of England derive their existence and authority from the King, and that the Kingly government could go on, in all its functions, without them. This pitiful paradox found an apologist in Mr. Windham, whose chivalry in the new cause he had espoused left Mr. Pitt himself at a wondering distance behind. His speeches in defence of Reeves, (which are among the proofs that remain of that want of equipoise observable in his fine, rather than solid, understanding,) have been with a judicious charity towards his memory, omitted in the authentic collection by Mr. Amyot.
When such libels against the Constitution were not only promulgated, but acted upon, on one side, it was to be expected, and hardly, perhaps, to be regretted, that the repercussion should be heard loudly and warningly from the other. Mr. Fox, by a subsequent explanation, softened down all that was most menacing in his language; and, though the word "Resistance," at full length, should, like the hand-writing on the wall, be reserved for the last intoxication of the Belshazzars of this world, a letter or two of it may, now and then, glare out upon their eyes, without producing any thing worse than a salutary alarm amid their revels. At all events, the high and constitutional grounds on which Mr. Fox defended the expressions he had hazarded, may well reconcile us to any risk incurred by their utterance. The tribute to the house of Russell, in the grand and simple passage beginning, "Dear to this country are the descendants of the illustrious Russell," is as applicable to that Noble family now as it was then; and will continue to be so, I trust, as long as a single vestige of a race, so pledged to the cause of liberty, remains.
In one of Mr. Sheridan's speeches on the subject of Reeves's libel, there are some remarks on the character of the people of England, not only candid and just, but, as applied to them at that trying crisis, interesting:—
"Never was there," he said, "any country in which there was so much absence of public principle, and at the same time so many instances of private worth. Never was there so much charity and humanity towards the poor and the distressed; any act of cruelty or oppression never failed to excite a sentiment of general indignation against its authors. It was a circumstance peculiarly strange, that though luxury had arrived to such a pitch, it had so little effect in depraving the hearts and destroying the morals of people in private life; and almost every day produced some fresh example of generous feelings and noble exertions of benevolence. Yet amidst these phenomena of private virtue, it was to be remarked, that there was an almost total want of public spirit, and a most deplorable contempt of public principle.
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