The time is rushing on
When France shall be undone;
And like a dream shall pass,
Pope, monarch, priest, and mass;
And vengeance shall be just,
And all her shrines be dust,
And thunder dig the grave
Of sovereign and of slave.]
"The production is certainly curious," remarked W——; "but poets always had something of the fortune-teller; and it is striking, that in many of the modern Italian Latinists you will find more instances of strong declamation against Rome, and against France as its chief supporter, than perhaps in any other authorship of Europe. Audacity was the result of terror. All Italy reminds one of the papal palace at Avignon—the banqueting-rooms above, the dungeons of the Inquisition below; popes and princes feasting within sound of the rack and the scourge. The Revolution is but the ripening of the disease; the hydrophobia which has been lurking in the system for centuries."
"Why, then," said Sheridan, "shall we all wonder at what all expected? France may be running mad without waiting for the moon; mad in broad day; absolutely stripping off, not merely the royal livery, which she wore for the last five hundred years with so much the look of a well-bred footman; but tearing away the last coverture of the national nakedness. Well; in a week or two of this process, she will have got rid not only of church and king, but of laws, property, and personal freedom. But, I ask, what business have we to interfere? If she is madder than the maddest of March hares, she is only the less dangerous; she will probably dash out her brains against the first wall that she cannot spring over."
"But, at least, we know that mischief is already done among ourselves.
Those French affairs are dividing our strength in the House," remarked
C——.
"What then?" quickly demanded Sheridan. "What is it to me if others have the nightmare, while I feel my eyes open? Burke, in his dreams, may dread the example of France; but I as little dread it as I should a fire at the Pole. He thinks that Englishmen have such a passion for foreign importations, that if the pestilence were raging on the other side of the Channel, we should send for specimens. My proposition is, that the example of France is more likely to make slaves of us than republicans."
"Is it," asked W——, "to make us
'Fly from minor tyrants to the throne?'"
"I laugh at the whole," replied Sheridan, "as a bugbear. I have no fear of France as either a schoolmaster, or a seducer, of England. France is lunatic, and who dreads a lunatic after his first paroxysm? Exhaustion, disgust, decay, perhaps death, are the natural results. If there is any peril to us, it is only from our meddling. The lunatic never revenges himself but on his keeper. I should leave the patient to the native doctors, or to those best of all doctors for mad nations, suffering, shame, and time. Chain, taunt, or torment the lunatic, and he rewards you by knocking out your brains."
"Those are not exactly the opinions of our friend Charles," observed the prince with peculiar emphasis.
"No," was the reply. "I think for myself. Some would take the madman by the hand, and treat him as if in possession of his senses. Burke would gather all the dignitaries of Church and State, and treat him as a demoniac; attempt to exorcise the evil spirit, and if it continued intractable, solemnly excommunicate the possessed by bell, book, and candle. But, as I do not like throwing away my trouble, I should let him alone."