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that ever came before Parliament; the embargo of 1776, for instance. O, fatal embargo, that breach of law, and ruin of commerce!' You supported the unparalleled profusion and jobbing of Lord Harcourt's scandalous ministry-the address to support the American war-the other address to send four thousand men, which you had yourself declared to be necessary for the defense of Ireland, to fight against the liberties of America, to which you had declared yourself a friend. You, sir, who delight to utter execrations against the American commissioners of 1778, on account of their hostility to Americayou, sir, who manufacture stage thunder against Mr. Eden for his anti-American principlesyou, sir, whom it pleases to chant a hymn to the immortal Hampden-you, sir, approved of the tyranny exercised against America; and you, sir, voted four thousand Irish troops to cut the throats of the Americans fighting for their freedom, fighting for your freedom, fighting for the great principle, LIBERTY! But you found, at last (and this should be an eternal lesson to men of your craft and cunning), that the King had only dishonored you; the court had bought, but | would not trust you; and, having voted for the worst measures, you remained, for seven years, the creature of salary, without the confidence of government. Mortified at the discovery, and stung by disappointment, you betake yourself to the sad expedients of duplicity. You try the

sorry game of a trimmer in your progress to the acts of an incendiary. You give no honest support either to the government or the people. You, at the most critical period of their existence, take no part; you sign no non-consumption agreement; you are no Volunteer; you oppose no Perpetual Mutiny Bill; no altered Sugar Bill; you declare that you lament that the Declaration of Right should have been brought forward; and observing, with regard to both prince and people, the most impartial treachery and desertion, you justify the suspicion of your Sovereigu, by betraying the government, as you had sold the people, until, at last, by this hollow conduct, and for some other steps, the result of mortified ambition, being dismissed, and another person put in your place, you fly to the ranks of the Volunteers and canvass for mutiny; you announce that the country was ruined by other men during that period in which she had been sold by you. Your logic is, that the repeal of a declaratory law is not the repeal of a law at all, and the effect of that logic is, an English act affecting to emancipate Ireland, by exercising over her the legislative authority of the British Parliament. Such has been your conduct; and at such conduct every order of your fellow-subjects have a right to exclaim! The merchant may say to youthe constitutionalist may say to you-the American may say to you-and I, I now say, and say to your beard, sir-you are not an honest man !”

INVECTIVE

OF MR. GRATTAN AGAINST MR. CORRY, DELIVERED DURING THE DEBATE ON THE UNION OF IRELAND TO ENGLAND, FEBRUARY 14, 1800.

Has the gentleman done? Has he completely done? He was unparliamentary from the beginning to the end of his speech. There was scarce a word that he uttered that was not a violation of the privileges of the House; but I did not call him to order. Why? Because the limited talents of some men render it impossible for them to be severe without being unparliamentary; but before I sit down I shall show him how to be severe and parliamentary at the same time. On any other occasion I should think myself justifiable in treating with silent contempt any thing which might fall from that honorable member; but there are times when the insignificance of the accuser is lost in the magnitude of the accusation. I know the difficulty the honorable gentleman labored under when he attacked me, conscious that, on a comparative view of our characters, public and private, there is nothing he could say which would injure me. The public would not believe the charge. I despise the falsehood. If such a charge were made by an honest man, I would answer it in the manner I shall do before I sit down. But I shall first reply to it when not made by an honest man.

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"traitor," unqualified by any epithet? I will tell him; it was because he dare not. It was the act of a coward, who raises his arm to strike, but has not courage to give the blow. I will not call him a villain, because it would be unparliamentary, and he is a privy counselor. I will not call him fool, because he happens to be Chancellor of the Exchequer; but I say he is one who has abused the privilege of Parliament and the freedom of debate, to the uttering language which, if spoken out of the House, I should answer only with a blow. I care not how high his situation, how low his character, how contemptible his speech; whether a privy counselor or a parasite, my answer would be a blow. He has charged me with being connected with the rebels. The charge is utterly, totally, and meanly false. Does the honorable gentleman rely on the report of the House of Lords for the foundation of his assertion? If he does, I can prove to the committee there was a physical impossibility of that report being true; but I scorn to answer any man for my conduct, whether he be a political coxcomb, or whether he brought himself into power by a false glare of courage or not. I scorn to answer any wizard of the Castle, throwing himself into fantastical airs;

try.

but if an honorable and independent man were | blow is aimed at the independence of our counto make a charge against me, I would say, "You charge me with having an intercourse with rebels, and you found your charge upon what is said to have appeared before a committee of the Lords. Sir, the report of that committee is totally and egregiously irregular." I will read a letter from Mr. Nelson, who had been examined before that committee; it states that what the report represents him as having spoken is not what he said. [Mr. Grattan here read the letter from Mr. Nelson, denying that he had any connection with Mr. Grattan, as charged in the report; and concluded by saying, "never was misrepresentation more vile than that put into my mouth by the report."]

The right honorable gentleman says I fled from the country, after exciting rebellion; and that I have returned to raise another. No such thing. The charge is false. The civil war had not commenced when I left the kingdom; and I could not have returned without taking a part. On the one side there was the camp of the rebel; on the other, the camp of the minister, a greater traitor than that rebel. The strong-hold of the Constitution was nowhere to be found. I agree that the rebel who rises against the government should have suffered; but I missed on the scaffold the right honorable gentleman. Two desperate parties were in arms against the Constitution. The right honorable gentleman belonged to one of those parties, and deserved death. I could not join the rebel-I could not join the government. I could not join tortureI could not join half-hanging-I could not join free quarter. I could take part with neither. I was, therefore, absent from a scene where I could not be active without self-reproach, nor indiffer

From the situation that I held, and from the connections I had in the city of Dublin, it was necessary for me to hold intercourse with various descriptions of persons. The right honorable member might as well have been charged with a participation in the guilt of those traitors; for he had communicated with some of those very persons on the subject of parliamentary reform. The Irish government, too, were in communica-ent with safety. tion with some of them.

The right honorable member has told me I deserted a profession where wealth and station were the reward of industry and talent. If I mistake not, that gentleman endeavored to obtain those rewards by the same means; but he soon deserted the occupation of a barrister for those of a parasite and pander. He fled from the labor of study to flatter at the table of the great. He found the Lords' parlor a better sphere for his exertions than the hall of the Four Courts; the house of a great man a more convenient way to power and to place; and that it was easier for a statesman of middling talents to sell his friends than a lawyer of no talents to sell his clients.

For myself, whatever corporate or other bodies have said or done to me, I, from the bottom of my heart, forgive them. I feel I have done too much for my country to be vexed at them. I would rather that they should not feel or acknowledge what I have done for them, and call me traitor, than have reason to say I sold them. I will always defend myself against the assassin; but with large bodies it is different. To the people I will bow; they may be my enemy-I never shall be theirs.

At the emancipation of Ireland, in 1782, I took a leading part in the foundation of that Constitution which is now endeavored to be destroyed. Of that Constitution I was the author; in that Constitution I glory; and for it the honorable gentleman should bestow praise, not invent calumny. Notwithstanding my weak statc of body, I come to give my last testimony against this Union, so fatal to the liberties and interest of my country. I come to make common cause with these honorable and virtuous gentlemen around me; to try and save the Constitution; or if not save the Constitution, at least to save cur characters, and remove from our graves the foul disgrace of standing apart while a deadly

Many honorable gentlemen thought differently from me. I respect their opinions; but I keep my own; and I think now, as I thought then, that the treason of the minister against the liberties of the people was infinitely worse than the rebellion of the people against the minister.

I have returned, not, as the right honorable member has said, to raise another storm-I have returned to discharge an honorable debt of gratitude to my country, that conferred a great reward for past services, which, I am proud to say, was not greater than my desert. I have returned to protect that Constitution of which I was the parent and the founder, from the assassination of such men as the honorable gentleman and his unworthy associates. They are corrupt-they are seditious-and they, at this very moment, are in a conspiracy against their country. I have returned to refute a libel, as false as it is malicious, given to the public under the appellation of a report of the committee of the Lords. Here I stand, ready for impeachment or trial: I dare accusation. I defy the honorable gentleman; I defy the government; I defy the whole phalanx. Let them come forth. I tell the ministers I will neither give them quarter nor take it. I am here to lay the shattered remains of my constitution on the floor of this House, in defense of the liberties of my country.

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My guilt or innocence have little to do with the question here. I rose with the rising fortunes of my country-I am willing to die with her expiring liberties. To the voice of the people I will bow, but never shall I submit to the calumnies of an individual hired to betray them and slander me. The indisposition of my body has left me, perhaps, no means but that of lying down with fallen Ireland, and recording upon her tomb my dying testimony against the flagitious corruption that has murdered her independence.

purchase public scorn by private infamy-the lighter characters of the model have as little chance of weaning me from the habits of a life spent, if not exhausted, in the cause of my native land. Am I to renounce those habits now forever, and at the beck of whom? I should rather say of what-half a minister-half a mon

The right honorable gentleman has said that this was not my place that, instead of having a voice in the councils of my country, I should now stand a culprit at her bar-at the bar of a court of criminal judicature, to answer for my treasons. The Irish people have not so read my history; but let that pass; if I am what he said I am, the people are not therefore to forfeit their Constitu-key-a 'prentice politician, and a master coxtion. In point of argument, therefore, the attack is bad-in point of taste or feeling, if he had either, it is worse-in point of fact, it is false, utterly and absolutely false-as rancorous a falsehood as the most malignant motives could suggest to the prompt sympathy of a shameless and a venal defense. The right honorable gentleman has suggested examples which I should have shunned, and examples which I should have followed. I shall never follow his, and I have ever avoided it. I shall never be ambitious to

comb. He has told you that what he said of me here, he would say any where. I believe he would say thus of me in any place where he thought himself safe in saying it. Nothing can limit his calumnies but his fears—in Parliament he has calumniated me to-night, in the King's courts he would calumniate me to-morrow; but had he said or dared to insinuate one half as much elsewhere, the indignant spirit of an honest man would have answered the vile and venal slanderer with a blow.

CHARACTER OF LORD CHATHAM. The Secretary stood alone. Modern degeneracy had not reached him. Original and unaccommodating, the features of his character had the hardihood of antiquity. His august mind overawed Majesty; and one of his Sovereigns [George III.] thought royalty so impaired in his presence, that he conspired to remove him, in order to be relieved from his superiority. No state chicanery, no narrow system of vicious politics, no idle contest for ministerial victories, sunk him to the vulgar level of the great; but, overbearing, persuasive, and impracticable, his object was England-his ambition was fame. Without dividing, he destroyed party; without corrupting, he made a venal age unanimous. France sunk beneath him; with one hand he smote the house of Bourbon, and wielded in the other the democracy of England. The sight of his mind was infinite, and his schemes were to affect, not England, not the present age only, but Europe and posterity. Wonderful were the means by which these schemes were accomplished, always seasonable, always adequate, the suggestions of an understanding animated by ardor, and enlightened by prophecy.

A character so exalted, so strenuous, so various, so authoritative, astonished a corrupt age, and the Treasury trembled at the name of Pitt through all her classes of venality. Corruption imagined, indeed, that she found defects in this statesman, and talked much of the inconsistency of his glory, and much of the ruin of his victories-but the history of his country and the calamities of the enemy answered and refuted her.

The ordinary feelings which make life amiable and indolent-those sensations which soften and allure, and vulgarize, were unknown to him. No domestic difficulties, no domestic weakness, reached him; but, aloof from the sordid occurrences of life, and unsullied by its intercourse, he came occasionally into our system to counsel and decide.

1 See page 63.

Nor were his political abilities his only talents; his eloquence was an era in the Senate. Peculiar and spontaneous, familiarly expressing gigantic sentiments and instinctive wisdom-not like the torrent of Demosthenes, or the splendid conflagration of Tully, it resembled, sometimes the thunder, and sometimes the music of the spheres. Like Murray [Lord Mansfield], he did not conduct the understanding through the painful subtilty of argumentation; nor was he, like Townsend, forever on the rack of exertion, but rather lightened upon the subject, and reached the point by the flashings of his mind, which, like those of his eye, were felt, but could not be followed.

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Upon the whole, there was in this man something that could create, subvert, or reform; an understanding, a spirit, and an eloquence to summon mankind to society, or to break the bonds of slavery asunder, and rule the wildness of free minds with unbounded authority; something that could establish or overwhelm empire, and strike a blow in the world that should resound through its history.

* Mr. Charles Townsend. See his character in Burke's speech on American Taxation.

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RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN was born at Dublin in September, 1751. His father, Thomas Sheridan, author of the first attempt at a Pronouncing Dictionary of our language, was a distinguished teacher of elocution, and during most of his life was connected with the stage. This fact very naturally turned the attention of young Sheridan, even from his boyhood, to theatrical composition; and, being driven to strenuous exertion in consequence of an early marriage, he became a dramatic writer at the age of twenty-four. His first production was The Rivals, which, by the liveliness of its plot and the exquisite humor of its dialogue, placed him at once in the first rank of comic writers. His next work was the opera of The Duenna, which was performed seventy-five times during the season in which it was first produced, and yielded him a very large profit. In the year 1776, in conjunction with two friends, he purchased Garrick's half of the Drury Lane Theater; and becoming proprietor of the other half at the end of two years, he gave his father the appointment of manager. He now produced his School for Scandal, which has been regarded by many as the best comedy in our language. This was followed by The Critic, which was equally admirable as a farce; and here ended, in 1779, his "legitimate offerings on the shrine of the Dramatic Muse." He still, however, retained his proprietorship in Drury Lane, which would have furnished an ample support for any one but a person of his expensive and reckless habits.

Mr. Sheridan had cherished from early life a very lively interest in politics; and now that his thirst for dramatic fame was satiated, his ambition rose higher, and led him to seek for new distinction in the fields of oratory. He had already made the acquaintance of Lord John Townsend, Mr. Windham, and other distinguished members of the Whig party, and was desirous of forming a political connection with Mr. Fox. To promote this object, Townsend made a dinner-party early in 1780, at which he brought them together. Speaking of the subject afterward, he said, “I told Fox that all the notions he might have conceived of Sheridan's talents and genius from the 'Rivals,' &c., would fall infinitely short of the admiration of his astonishing powers which I was sure he would entertain at the first interview. Fox told me, after breaking up from dinner, that he had always thought Hare, after my uncle, Charles Townsend, the wittiest man he had ever met with, but that Sheridan surpassed them both, infinitely." Sheridan, on his side, formed the strongest attachment for Mr. Fox as a man and a political leader, and was soon after placed on terms of equal intimacy with Mr. Burke. He was admitted to Brooks's Club-house, the head-quarters of the Whigs,' and soon after became a member for Stafford, at an expense of £2000.

Mr. Sheridan's maiden speech was delivered on the 20th of November, 1780. The House listened to him with marked attention, but his appearance did not entirely satisfy the expectations of his friends. Woodfall, the reporter, used to relate that The following lines of Tickell give the character of Brooks:

And know, I've bought the best Champagne from Brooks;
From liberal Brooks, whose speculative skill

Is hasty credit and a distant bill;

Who, nursed in clubs, disdains a vulgar trade,

Exults to trust, and blushes to be paid.

Nothing could be more convenient for a man of Sheridan's habits than so indulgent a creditor.

Sheridan came up to him in the gallery, when the speech was ended, and asked him, with much anxiety, what he thought of his first attempt. "I am sorry to say," replied Woodfall," that I don't think this is your line-you had better have stuck to your former pursuits." Sheridan rested his head on his hand for some minutes, and then exclaimed, with vehemence, "It is in me, and it shall come out of me!" He now devoted himself with the utmost assiduity, quickened by a sense of shame, to the cultivation of his powers as a speaker; and having great ingenuity, ready wit, perfect self-possession, and a boldness amounting almost to effrontery, he made himself at last a most dexterous and effective debater.

During the short administration of the Marquess of Rockingham, in 1782, Mr. Sheridan came into office as Under Secretary of State; but on the decease of Rockingham, he resigned in common with Fox, Burke, and others, when Lord Shelburne was made prime minister in preference to Mr. Fox. Mr. William Pitt now came into the ministry, at the age of twenty-three, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and undertook, soon after, to put down Mr. Sheridan by a contemptuous allusion to his theatrical pursuits. "No man," said he "admires more than I do the abilities of that right honorable gentleman—the elegant sallies of his thought, the gay effusions of his fancy, his dramatic turns, and his epigrammatic point. If they were reserved for the proper stage, they would no doubt receive the plaudits of the audience; and it would be the fortune of the right honorable gentleman, “sui plausu gaudere theatri." Mr. Sheridan replied to this insolent language, with admirable adroitness, in the following words: "On the particular sort of personality which the right honorable gentleman has thought proper to make use of, I need not comment. The propriety, the taste, and the gentlemanly point of it must be obvious to this House. But let me assure the right honorable gentleman that I do now, and will, at any time he chooses to repeat this sort of allusion, meet it with the most perfect good humor. Nay, I will say more. Flattered and encouraged by the right honorable gentleman's panegyric on my talents, if I ever engage again in the composition he alludes to, I may be tempted to an act of presumption, and attempt an improvement on one of Ben Jonson's best characters, that of the Angry Boy, in the Alchymist." The effect was irresistible. The House was convulsed with laughter; and Mr. Pitt came very near having the title of the Angry Boy fastened on him for the remainder of his life.

When the administration of Lord Shelburne gave way to the Coalition Ministry of Mr. Fox and Lord North, in 1783, Sheridan was again brought into office as Secretary of the Treasury. The defeat of Mr. Fox's East India Bill threw him out of power at the close of the same year; and from that time, for more than twenty-two years, he was a strenuous and active opponent of Mr. Pitt.

In the year 1787, Mr. Burke, who had devoted ten years to the investigation of English atrocities in India, called forth the entire strength of the Whig party for the impeachment of Warren Hastings. To Mr. Sheridan he assigned the management of the charge relating to the Begums or princesses of Oude. It was a subject peculiarly suited to his genius; and, aided by an intimate knowledge of the facts, which was supplied him by the researches of Burke, he brought forward the charge in the House of Commons, on the 7th of February, 1787. His speech on this occasion was so imperfectly reported that it may be said to be wholly lost. It was, however, according to the representation of all who heard it, an astonishing exhibition of eloquence. The whole assembly, at the conclusion, broke forth into expressions of tumultuous applause. Men of all parties vied with each other in their encomiums; and Mr. Pitt concluded his remarks by saying that "an abler speech was perhaps never delivered." A motion was made to adjourn, that the House might have time to recover their calmness and "collect their reason," after the excitement they had

To exult in the applause of his own theater.

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