The following is an instance of that happy power of applying old stories, for which Mr. Windham, no less than Sheridan, was remarkable, and which, by promoting anecdote into the service of argument and wit, ennobles it, when trivial, and gives new youth to it, when old.
"When they and others complain of the discontents of the Irish, they never appear to consider the cause. When they express their surprise that the Irish are not contented, while according to their observation, that people have so much reason to be happy, they betray a total ignorance of their actual circumstances. The fact is, that the tyranny practised upon the Irish has been throughout unremitting. There has been no change but in the manner of inflicting it. They have had nothing but variety in oppression, extending to all ranks and degrees of a certain description of the people. If you would know what this varied oppression consisted in, I refer you to the Penal Statutes you have repealed, and to some of those which still exist. There you will see the high and the low equally subjected to the lash of persecution; and yet still some persons affect to be astonished at the discontents of the Irish. But with all my reluctance to introduce any thing ludicrous upon so serious an occasion, I cannot help referring to a little story which those very astonished persons call to my mind. It was with respect to an Irish drummer, who was employed to inflict punishment upon a soldier. When the boy struck high, the poor soldier exclaimed, 'Lower, bless you,' with which the boy complied. But soon after the soldier exclaimed, 'Higher if you please,' But again he called out, 'A little lower:' upon which the accommodating boy addressed him—'Now, upon my conscience, I see you are a discontented man; for, strike where I may, there's no pleasing you.' Now your complaint of the discontents of the Irish appears to me quite as rational, while you continue to strike, only altering the place of attack."
Upon this speech, which may be considered as the bouquet, or last parting blaze of his eloquence, he appears to have bestowed considerable care and thought. The concluding sentences of the following passage, though in his very worst taste, were as anxiously labored by him, and put through as many rehearsals on paper, as any of the most highly finished witticisms in The School for Scandal.
"I cannot think patiently of such petty squabbles, while Bonaparte is grasping the nations; while he is surrounding France, not with that iron frontier, for which the wish and childish ambition of Louis XIV. was so eager, but with kingdoms of his own creation; securing the gratitude of higher minds as the hostage, and the fears of others as pledges for his safety. His are no ordinary fortifications. His martello towers are thrones; sceptres tipt with crowns are the palisadoes of his entrenchments, and Kings are his sentinels."
The Reporter here, by "tipping" the sceptres "with crowns," has improved, rather unnecessarily, upon the finery of the original. The following are specimens of the various trials of this passage which I find scribbled over detached scraps of paper:—
"Contrast the different attitudes and occupations of the two governments:—B. eighteen months from his capital,—head-quarters in the villages,—neither Berlin nor Warsaw,—dethroning and creating thrones,— the works he raises are monarchies,—sceptres his palisadoes, thrones his martello towers."
"Commissioning kings,—erecting thrones,—martello towers,—Cambaceres count noses,—Austrians, fine dressed, like Pompey's troops."
"B. fences with sceptres,—his martello towers are thrones,—he alone is,
France."
Another Dissolution of Parliament having taken place this year, he again became a candidate for the city of Westminster. But, after a violent contest, during which he stood the coarse abuse of the mob with the utmost good humor and playfulness, the election ended in favor of Sir Francis Burdett and Lord Cochrane, and Sheridan was returned, with his friend Mr. Michael Angelo Taylor, for the borough of Ilchester.
In the autumn of 1807 he had conceived some idea of leasing the property of Drury-Lane Theatre, and with that view had set on foot, through Mr. Michael Kelly, who was then in Ireland, a negotiation with Mr. Frederick Jones, the proprietor of the Dublin Theatre. In explaining his object to Mr. Kelly, in a letter dated August 30, 1807, he describes it as "a plan by which the property may be leased to those who have the skill and the industry to manage it as it should be for their own advantage, upon terms which would render any risk to them almost impossible;—the profit to them, (he adds,) would probably be beyond what I could now venture to state, and yet upon terms which would be much better for the real proprietors than any thing that can arise from the careless and ignorant manner in which the undertaking is now misconducted by those who, my son excepted, have no interest in its success, and who lose nothing by its failure."