The Address which he delivered, at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, in declining the offer of support which many of the electors still pressed upon him, contains some of those touches of personal feeling which a biographer is more particularly bound to preserve. In speaking of Mr. Fox, he said,—
"It is true there have been occasions upon which I have differed with him —painful recollections of the most painful moments of my political life! Nor were there wanting those who endeavored to represent these differences as a departure from the homage which his superior mind, though unclaimed by him, was entitled to, and from the allegiance of friendship which our hearts all swore to him. But never was the genuine and confiding texture of his soul more manifest than on such occasions; he knew that nothing on earth could detach me from him; and he resented insinuations against the sincerity and integrity of a friend, which he would not have noticed had they been pointed against himself. With such a man to have battled in the cause of genuine liberty,—with such a man to have struggled against the inroads of oppression and corruption,—with such an example before me, to have to boast that I never in my life gave one vote in Parliament that was not on the side of freedom, is the congratulation that attends the retrospect of my public life. His friendship was the pride and honor of my days. I never, for one moment, regretted to share with him the difficulties, the calumnies, and sometimes even the dangers, that attended an honorable course. And now, reviewing my past political life, were the option possible that I should retread the path. I solemnly and deliberately declare that I would prefer to pursue the same course; to bear up under the same pressure; to abide by the same principles; and remain by his side an exile from power, distinction, and emolument, rather than be at this moment a splendid example of successful servility or prosperous apostacy, though clothed with power, honor, titles, gorged with sinecures, and lord of hoards obtained from the plunder of the people."
At the conclusion of his Address he thus alludes, with evidently a deep feeling of discontent, to the circumstances that had obliged him to decline the honor now proposed to him:—
"Illiberal warnings have been held out, most unauthoritatively I know, that by persevering in the present contest I may risk my official situation, and if I retire, I am aware, that minds, as coarse and illiberal, may assign the dread of that as my motive. To such insinuations I shall scorn to make any other reply than a reference to the whole of my past political career. I consider it as no boast to say, that any one who has struggled through such a portion of life as I have, without obtaining an office, is not likely to I abandon his principles to retain one when acquired. If riches do not give independence, the next-best thing to being very rich is to have been used to be very poor. But independence is not allied to wealth, to birth, to rank, to power, to titles, or to honor. Independence is in the mind of a man, or it is no where. On this ground were I to decline the contest, should scorn the imputation that should bring the purity of my purpose into doubt. No Minister can expect to find in me a servile vassal. No Minister can expect from me the abandonment of any principle I have avowed, or any pledge I have given. I know not that I have hitherto shrunk in place from opinions I have maintained while in opposition. Did there exist a Minister of a different cast from any I know in being, were he to attempt to exact from me a different conduct, my office should be at his service tomorrow. Such a Minister might strip me of my situation, in some respects of considerable emolument, but he could not strip me of the proud conviction that I was right; he could not strip me of my own self-esteem; he could not strip me, I think, of some portion of the confidence and good opinion of the people. But I am noticing the calumnious threat I allude to more than it deserves. There can be no peril, I venture to assert, under the present Government, in the free exercise of discretion, such as belongs to the present question. I therefore disclaim the merit of putting anything to hazard. If I have missed the opportunity of obtaining all the support I might, perhaps, have had on the present occasion, from a very scrupulous delicacy, which I think became and was incumbent upon me, but which I by no means conceive to have been a fit rule for others, I cannot repent it. While the slightest aspiration of breath passed those lips, now closed for ever,—while one drop of life's blood beat in that heart, now cold for ever,—I could not, I ought not, to have acted otherwise than I did.—I now come with a very embarrassed feeling to that declaration which I yet think you must have expected from me, but which I make with reluctance, because, from the marked approbation I have experienced from you, I fear that with reluctance you will receive it.—I feel myself under the necessity of retiring from this contest."
About three weeks after, ensued the Dissolution of Parliament,—a measure attended with considerable unpopularity to the Ministry, and originating as much in the enmity of one of its members to Lord Sidmouth, as the introduction of that noble Lord among them, at all, was owing to the friendship of another. In consequence of this event, Lord Percy having declined offering himself again, Mr. Sheridan became a candidate for Westminster, and after a most riotous contest with a demagogue of the moment, named Paul, was, together with Sir Samuel Hood, declared duly elected.
The moderate measure in favor of the Roman Catholics, which the Ministry now thought it due to the expectations of that body to bring forward, was, as might be expected, taken advantage of by the King to rid himself of their counsels, and produced one of those bursts of bigotry, by which the people of England have so often disgraced themselves. It is sometimes a misfortune to men of wit, that they put their opinions in a form to be remembered. We might, perhaps, have been ignorant of the keen, but worldly view which Mr. Sheridan, on this occasion, took of the hardihood of his colleagues, if he had not himself expressed it in a form so portable to the memory. "He had often," he said, "heard of people knocking out their brains against a wall, but never before knew of any one building a wall expressly for the purpose."
It must be owned, indeed, that, though far too sagacious and liberal not to be deeply impressed with the justice of the claims advanced by the Catholics, he was not altogether disposed to go those generous lengths in their favor, of which Mr. Fox and a few others of their less calculating friends were capable. It was his avowed opinion, that, though the measure, whenever brought forward, should be supported and enforced by the whole weight of the party, they ought never so far to identify or encumber themselves with it, as to make its adoption a sine-qua-non of their acceptance or retention of office. His support, too, of the Ministry of Mr. Addington, which was as virtually pledged against the Catholics as that which now succeeded to power, sufficiently shows the secondary station that this great question occupied in his mind; nor can such a deviation from the usual tone of his political feelings be otherwise accounted for, than by supposing that he was aware of the existence of a strong indisposition to the measure in that quarter, by whose views and wishes his public conduct was, in most cases, regulated.
On the general question, however, of the misgovernment of Ireland, and the disabilities of the Catholics, as forming its most prominent feature, his zeal was always forthcoming and ardent,—and never more so than during the present Session, when, on the question of the Irish Arms Bill, and his own motion upon the State of Ireland, he distinguished himself by an animation and vigor worthy of the best period of his eloquence.
Mr. Grattan, in supporting the coercive measures now adopted against his country, had shown himself, for once, alarmed into a concurrence with the wretched system of governing by Insurrection Acts, and, for once, lent his sanction to the principle upon which all such measures are founded, namely, that of enabling Power to defend itself against the consequences of its own tyranny and injustice. In alluding to some expressions used by this great man, Sheridan said:—
"He now happened to recollect what was said by a Right Honorable Gentleman, to whose opinions they all deferred, (Mr. Grattan,) that notwithstanding he voted for the present measure, with all its defects, rather than lose it altogether, yet that gentleman said, that he hoped to secure the revisionary interest of the Constitution to Ireland. But when he saw that the Constitution was suspended from the year 1796 to the present period, and that it was now likely to be continued for three years longer, the danger was that we might lose the interest altogether;—when we were mortgaged for such a length of time, at last a foreclosure might take place."