"C. J. F."
It would be rash, without some further insight into the circumstances of this singular interference, to enter into any speculations with respect to its nature or motives, or to pronounce how far Mr. Sheridan was justified in being the instrument of it. But on the share of Mr. Fox in the transaction, such suspension of opinion is unnecessary. We have here his simple and honest words before us,—and they breathe a spirit of sincerity from which even Princes might take a lesson with advantage.
Mr. Pitt was not long in discovering that place does not always imply Power, and that in separating himself from the other able men of the day, he had but created an Opposition as much too strong for the Government, as the Government itself was too weak for the country. The humiliating resource to which he was driven, in trying, as a tonic, the reluctant alliance of Lord Sidmouth,—the abortiveness of his efforts to avert the full of his old friend, Lord Melville, and the fatality of ill luck that still attended his exertions against France,—all concurred to render this reign of the once powerful Minister a series of humiliations, shifts, and disasters, unlike his former proud period in every thing but ill success. The powerful Coalition opposed to him already had a prospect of carrying by storm the post which he occupied, when, by his death, it was surrendered, without parley, into their hands.
The Administration that succeeded, under the auspices of Lord Greville and Mr. Fox, bore a resemblance to the celebrated Brass of Corinth, more, perhaps, in the variety of the metals brought together, than in the perfection of the compound that resulted from their fusion. [Footnote: See in the Annual Register of 1806, some able remarks upon Coalitions in general, as well as a temperate defence of this Coalition in particular,—for which that work is, I suspect, indebted to a hand such as has not often, since the time of Burke, enriched its pages.] There were comprised in it, indeed, not only the two great parties of the leading chiefs, but those Whigs who differed with them both under the Addington Ministry, and the Addingtons that differed with them all on the subject of the Catholic claims. With this last anomalous addition to the miscellany the influence of Sheridan is mainly chargeable. Having, for some time past, exerted all his powers of management to bring about a coalition between Carlton-House and Lord Sidmouth, he had been at length so successful, that upon the formation of the present Ministry, it was the express desire of the Prince that Lord Sidmouth should constitute a part of it. To the same unlucky influence, too, is to be traced the very questionable measure, (notwithstanding the great learning and ability with which it was defended,) of introducing the Chief Justice, Lord Ellenborough, into the Cabinet.
As to Sheridan's own share in the arrangements, it was, no doubt, expected by him that he should now be included among the members of the Cabinet; and it is probable that Mr. Fox, at the head of a purely Whig ministry, would have so far considered the services of his ancient ally, and the popularity still attached to his name through the country, as to confer upon him this mark of distinction and confidence. But there were other interests to be consulted;—and the undisguised earnestness with which Sheridan had opposed the union of his party with the Grenvilles, left him but little supererogation of services to expect in that quarter. Some of his nearest friends, and particularly Mrs. Sheridan, entreated, as I understand, in the most anxious manner, that he would not accept any such office as that of Treasurer of the Navy, for the responsibility and business of which they knew his habits so wholly unfitted him,—but that, if excluded by his colleagues from the distinction of a seat in the Cabinet, he should decline all office whatsoever, and take his chance in a friendly independence of them. But the time was now past when he could afford to adopt this policy,—the emoluments of a place were too necessary to him to be rejected;—and, in accepting the same office that had been allotted to him in the Regency—arrangements of 1789, he must have felt, with no small degree of mortification, how stationary all his efforts since then had left him, and what a blank was thus made of all his services in the interval.
The period of this Ministry, connected with the name of Mr. Fox, though brief, and in some respects, far from laudable, was distinguished by two measures,—the Plan of Limited Service, and the Resolution for the Abolition of the Slave-Trade,—which will long be remembered to the honor of those concerned in them. The motion of Mr. Fox against the Slave-Trade was the last he ever made in Parliament;—and the same sort of melancholy admiration that Pliny expressed, in speaking of a beautiful picture, the painter of which had died in finishing it,—"dolor manas dum id ageret, abreptae"—comes naturally over our hearts in thinking of the last, glorious work, to which this illustrious statesman, in dying, set his hand.
Though it is not true, as has been asserted, that Mr. Fox refused to see Sheridan in his last illness, it is but too certain that those appearances of alienation or reserve, which had been for some time past observable in the former, continued to throw a restraint over their intercourse with each other to the last. It is a proof, however, of the absence of any serious grounds for this distrust, that Sheridan as the person selected by the relatives of Mr. Fox to preside over and direct the arrangements of the funeral, and that he put the last, solemn seal to their long intimacy, by following his friend, as mourner, to the grave.
The honor of representing the city of Westminster in Parliament had been, for some time, one of the dreams of Sheridan's ambition. It was suspected, indeed,—I know not with what justice,—that in advising Mr. Fox, as he is said to have done, about the year 1800, to secede from public life altogether, he was actuated by a wish to succeed him in the representation of Westminster, and had even already set on foot some private negotiations towards that object. Whatever grounds there may have been for this suspicion, the strong wish that he felt on the subject had long been sufficiently known to his colleagues; and on the death of Mr. Fox, it appeared, not only to himself, but the public, that he was the person naturally pointed out as most fit to be his parliamentary successor. It was, therefore, with no slight degree of disappointment he discovered, that the ascendancy of Aristocratic influence was, as usual, to prevail, and that the young son of the Duke of Northumberland would be supported by the Government in preference to him, It is but right, however, in justice to the Ministry, to state, that the neglect with which they appear to have treated him on this occasion,—particularly in not apprising him of their decision in favor of Lord Percy, sufficiently early to save him from the humiliation of a fruitless attempt,—is proved, by the following letters, to have originated in a double misapprehension, by which, while Sheridan, on one side, was led to believe that the Ministers would favor his pretensions, the Ministers, on the other, were induced to think that he had given up all intentions of being a candidate.
The first letter is addressed to the gentleman, (one of Sheridan's intimate friends,) who seems to have been, unintentionally, the cause of the mistake on both sides.