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Impeachment of Mr. Hastings.

Death of Mr. Sheridan's Father.--Verses by Mrs. Sheridan on the Death of her Sister, Mrs. Tickell.

Illness of the King.--Regency.--Private Life of Mr. Sheridan.

French Revolution.--Mr. Burke.--His Breach with Mr. Sheridan.--Dissolution of Parliament.--Mr. Burke and Mr. Fox.--Russian Armament.--Royal Scotch Boroughs.

Death of Mrs. Sheridan.

Drury-Lane Theatre.--Society of "The Friends of the People."--Madame de Genlis.--War with France.--Whig Seceders.--Speeches in Parliament--Death of Tickell.

Speech in Answer to Lord Mornington.--Coalition of the Whig Seceders with Mr. Pitt.--Mr. Canning.--Evidence on the Trial of Horne Tooke.--The "Glorious First of June."--Marriage of Mr. Sheridan.--Pamphlet of Mr. Reeves--Debts of the Prince of Wales.--Shakspeare Manuscripts.--Trial of Stone.--Mutiny at the Nore.--Secession of Mr. Fox from Parliament.

Play of "The Stranger."--Speeches in Parliament.--Pizarro.--Ministry of Mr. Addington.--French Institute.--Negotiations with Mr. Kemble.

State of Parties.--Offer of a Place to Mr. T. Sheridan.--Receivership of the Duchy of Cornwall bestowed upon Mr. Sheridan.--Return of Mr. Pitt to Power.--Catholic Question.--Administration of Lord Grenville and Mr. Fox.--Death of Mr. Fox.--Representation of Westminster.--Dismission of the Ministry.--Theatrical Negotiation.--Spanish Question.--Letter to the Prince.

Destruction of the Theatre of Drury-Lane by Fire.--Mr. Whitbread--Plan for a Third Theatre.--Illness of the King.--Regency.--Lord Grey and Lord Grenville.--Conduct of Mr. Sheridan.--His Vindication of himself.

Affairs of the new Theatre.--Mr. Whitbread.--Negotiations with Lord Grey and Lord Grenville.--Conduct of Mr. Sheridan relative to the Household.--His Last Words in Parliament.--Failure at Stafford. --Correspondence with Mr. Whitbread.--Lord Byron.--Distresses of Sheridan.--Illness.--Death and Funeral.--General Remarks.

MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF THE RIGHT HONORABLE RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN.

IMPEACHMENT OF MR. HASTINGS.

The motion of Mr. Burke on the 10th of May, 1787, "That Warren Hastings, Esq., be impeached," having been carried without a division, Mr. Sheridan was appointed one of the Managers, "to make good the Articles" of the Impeachment, and, on the 3d of June in the following year, brought forward the same Charge in Westminster Hall which he had already enforced with such wonderful talent in the House of Commons.

To be called upon for a second great effort of eloquence, on a subject of which all the facts and the bearings remained the same, was, it must be acknowledged, no ordinary trial to even the most fertile genius; and Mr. Fox, it is said, hopeless of any second flight ever rising to the grand elevation of the first, advised that the former Speech should be, with very little change, repeated. But such a plan, however welcome it might be to the indolence of his friend, would have looked too like an acknowledgment of exhaustion on the subject to be submitted to by one so justly confident in the resources both of his reason and fancy. Accordingly, he had the glory of again opening, in the very same field, a new and abundant spring of eloquence, which, during four days, diffused its enchantment among an assembly of the most illustrious persons of the land, and of which Mr. Burke pronounced at its conclusion, that "of all the various species of oratory, of every kind of eloquence that had been heard, either in ancient or modern times; whatever the acuteness of the bar, the dignity of the senate, or the morality of the pulpit could furnish, had not been equal to what that House had that day heard in Westminster Hall. No holy religionist, no man of any description as a literary character, could have come up, in the one instance, to the pure sentiments of morality, or in the other, to the variety of knowledge, force of imagination, propriety and vivacity of allusion, beauty and elegance of diction, and strength of expression, to which they had that day listened. From poetry up to eloquence there was not a species of composition of which a complete and perfect specimen might not have been culled, from one part or the other of the speech to which he alluded, and which, he was persuaded, had left too strong an impression on the minds of that House to be easily obliterated."

As some atonement to the world for the loss of the Speech in the House of Commons, this second master-piece of eloquence on the same subject has been preserved to us in a Report, from the short-hand notes of Mr. Gurney, which was for some time in the possession of the late Duke of Norfolk, but was afterwards restored to Mr. Sheridan, and is now in my hands.

In order to enable the reader fully to understand the extracts from this Report which I am about to give, it will be necessary to detail briefly the history of the transaction, on which the charge brought forward in the Speech was founded.

To crown all, one of the chief articles of the treaty, by which the Nabob was reluctantly induced to concur in these atrocious measures, was, as soon as the object had been gained, infringed by Mr. Hastings, who, in a letter to his colleagues in the government, honestly confesses that the concession of that article was only a fraudulent artifice of diplomacy, and never intended to be carried into effect.

Such is an outline of the case, which, with all its aggravating details, Mr. Sheridan had to state in these two memorable Speeches; and it was certainly most fortunate for the display of his peculiar powers, that this should be the Charge confided to his management. For, not only was it the strongest, and susceptible of the highest charge of coloring, but it had also the advantage of grouping together all the principal delinquents of the trial, and affording a gradation of hue, from the showy and prominent enormities of the Governor-General and Sir Elijah Impey in the front of the picture, to the subordinate and half-tint iniquity of the Middletons and Bristows in the back-ground.

Mr. Burke, it appears, had at first reserved this grand part in the drama of the Impeachment for himself; but, finding that Sheridan had also fixed his mind upon it, he, without hesitation, resigned it into his hands; thus proving the sincerity of his zeal in the cause, by sacrificing even the vanity of talent to its success.

The following letters from him, relative to the Impeachment, will be read with interest. The first is addressed to Mrs. Sheridan, and was written, I think, early in the proceedings; the second is to Sheridan himself:--

"MADAM,

"Madam, your most obedient

"and faithful humble Servant,

"EDM. BURKE."

"MY DEAR SIR,

"You have only to wish to be excused to succeed in your wishes; for, indeed, he must be a great enemy to himself who can consent, on account of a momentary ill-humor, to keep himself at a distance from you.

"Well, all will turn out right,--and half of you, or a quarter, is worth five other men. I think that this cause, which was originally yours, will be recognized by you, and that you will again possess yourself of it. The owner's mark is on it, and all our docking and cropping cannot hinder its being known and cherished by its original master. My most humble respects to Mrs. Sheridan. I am happy to find that she takes in good part the liberty I presumed to take with her. Grey has done much and will do every thing. It is a pity that he is not always toned to the full extent of his talents.

"Most truly yours,

"EDM. BURKE.

"I feel a little sickish at the approaching day. I have read much--too much, perhaps,--and, in truth, am but poorly prepared. Many things, too, have broken in upon me."

Though a Report, however accurate, must always do injustice to that effective kind of oratory which is intended rather to be heard than read, and, though frequently, the passages that most roused and interested the hearer, are those that seem afterwards the tritest and least animated to the reader, yet, with all this disadvantage, the celebrated oration in question so well sustains its reputation in the perusal, that it would be injustice, having an authentic Report in my possession, not to produce some specimens of its style and spirit.

In the course of his exordium, after dwelling upon the great importance of the inquiry in which they were engaged, and disclaiming for himself and his brother-managers any feeling of personal malice against the defendant, or any motive but that of retrieving the honor of the British name in India, and bringing down punishment upon those whose inhumanity and injustice had disgraced it,--he thus proceeds to conciliate the Court by a warm tribute to the purity of English justice:--

"However, when I have said this, I trust Your Lordships will not believe that, because something is necessary to retrieve the British character, we call for an example to be made, without due and solid proof of the guilt of the person whom we pursue:--no, my Lords, we know well that it is the glory of this Constitution, that not the general fame or character of any man--not the weight or power of any prosecutor--no plea of moral or political expediencey--not even the secret consciousness of guilt, which may live in the bosom of the Judge, can justify any British Court in passing any sentence, to touch a hair of the head, or an atom in any respect, of the property, of the fame, of the liberty of the poorest or meanest subject that breathes the air of this just and free land. We know, my Lords, that there can be no legal guilt without legal proof, and that the rule which defines the evidence is as much the law of the land as that which creates the crime. It is upon that ground we mean to stand."

Among those ready equivocations and disavowals, to which Mr. Hastings had recourse upon every emergency, and in which practice seems to have rendered him as shameless as expert, the step which he took with regard to his own defence during the trial was not the least remarkable for promptness and audacity. He had, at the commencement of the prosecution, delivered at the bar of the House of Commons, as his own, a written refutation of the charges then pending against him in that House, declaring at the same time, that "if truth could tend to convict him, he was content to be, himself, the channel to convey it." Afterwards, however, on finding that he had committed himself rather imprudently in this defence, he came forward to disclaim it at the bar of the House of Lords, and brought his friend Major Scott to prove that it had been drawn up by Messrs. Shore, Middleton, &c. &c.--that he himself had not even seen it, and therefore ought not to be held accountable for its contents. In adverting to this extraordinary evasion, Mr. Sheridan thus shrewdly and playfully exposes all the persons concerned in it:--

"Then says Mr. Hastings,--'That my defence! no, mere journeyman-work,--good enough for the Commons, but not fit for Your Lordships' consideration.' He then calls upon his Counsel to save him:--'I fear none of my accusers' witnesses--I know some of them well--I know the weakness of their memory, and the strength of their attachment--I fear no testimony but my own--save me from the peril of my own panegyric--preserve me from that, and I shall be safe.' Then is this plea brought to Your Lordships' bar, and Major Scott gravely asserts,--that Mr. Hastings did, at the bar of the House of Commons, vouch for facts of which he was ignorant, and for arguments which he had never read.

He thus describes the feelings of the people of the East with respect to the unapproachable sanctity of their Zenanas:--

"It is too much, I am afraid, the case, that persons, used to European manners, do not take up these sort of considerations at first with the seriousness that is necessary. For Your Lordships cannot even learn the right nature of those people's feelings and prejudices from any history of other Mahometan countries,--not even from that of the Turks, for they are a mean and degraded race in comparison with many of these great families, who, inheriting from their Persian ancestors, preserve a purer style of prejudice and a loftier superstition. Women there are not as in Turkey--they neither go to the mosque nor to the bath--it is not the thin veil alone that hides them--but in the inmost recesses of their Zenana they are kept from public view by those reverenced and protected walls, which, as Mr. Hastings and Sir Elijah Impey admit, are held sacred even by the ruffian hand of war or by the more uncourteous hand of the law. But, in this situation, they are not confined from a mean and selfish policy of man--not from a coarse and sensual jealousy--enshrined rather than immured, their habitation and retreat is a sanctuary, not a prison--their jealousy is their own--a jealousy of their own honor, that leads them to regard liberty as a degradation, and the gaze of even admiring eyes as inexpiable pollution to the purity of their fame and the sanctity of their honor.

"Such being the general opinion of this country, Your Lordships will find, that whatever treasures were given or lodged in a Zenana of this description must, upon the evidence of the thing itself, be placed beyond the reach of resumption. To dispute with the Counsel about the original right to those treasures--to talk of a title to them by the Mahometan law!--their title to them is the title of a Saint to the relics upon an altar, placed there by Piety, guarded by holy Superstition, and to be snatched from thence only by Sacrilege."

In showing that the Nabob was driven to this robbery of his relatives by other considerations than those of the pretended rebellion, which was afterwards conjured up by Mr. Hastings to justify it, he says,--

"The fact is, that through all his defences--through all his various false suggestions--through all these various rebellions and disaffections, Mr. Hastings never once lets go this plea--of extinguishable right in the Nabob. He constantly represents the seizing the treasures as a resumption of a right which he could not part with;--as if there were literally something in the Koran, that made it criminal in a true Mussulman to keep his engagements with his relations, and impious in a son to abstain from plundering his mother. I do gravely assure your Lordships that there is no such doctrine in the Koran, and no such principle makes a part in the civil or municipal jurisprudence of that country. Even after these Princesses had been endeavoring to dethrone the Nabob and to extirpate the English, the only plea the Nabob ever makes, is his right under the Mahometan law; and the truth is, he appears never to have heard any other reason, and I pledge myself to make it appear to Your Lordships, however extraordinary it may be, that not only had the Nabob never heard of the rebellion till the moment of seizing the palace, but, still further, that he never heard of it at all--that this extraordinary rebellion, which was as notorious as the rebellion of 1745 in London, was carefully concealed from those two parties--the Begums who plotted it, and the Nabob who was to be the victim of it.

"The existence of this rebellion was not the secret, but the notoriety of it was the secret; it was a rebellion which had for its object the destruction of no human creature but those who planned it;--it was a rebellion which, according to Mr. Middleton's expression, no man, either horse or foot, ever marched to quell. The Chief Justice was the only man who took the field against it,--the force against which it was raised, instantly withdrew to give it elbow-room,--and, even then, it was a rebellion which perversely showed itself in acts of hospitality to the Nabob whom it was to dethrone, and to the English whom it was to extirpate;--it was a rebellion plotted by two feeble old women, headed by two eunuchs, and suppressed by an affidavit."

The acceptance, or rather exaction, of the private present of ?100,000 is thus animadverted upon:

Again he thus adverts to this present:--

Anticipating the plea of state-necessity, which might possibly be set up in defence of the measures of the Governor-General, he breaks out into the following rhetorical passage:--

In describing that swarm of English pensioners and placemen, who were still, in violation of the late purchased treaty, left to prey on the finances of the Nabob, he says,--

"Here we find they were left, as heavy a weight upon the Nabob as ever,--left there with as keen an appetite, though not so clamorous. They were reclining on the roots and shades of that spacious tree, which their predecessors had stripped branch and bough--watching with eager eyes the first budding of a future prosperity, and of the opening harvest which they considered as the prey of their perseverance and rapacity."

We have in the close of the following passage, a specimen of that lofty style, in which, as if under the influence of Eastern associations, almost all the Managers of this Trial occasionally indulged: --

The following is one of those labored passages, of which the orator himself was perhaps most proud, but in which the effort to be eloquent is too visible, and the effect, accordingly, falls short of the pretension:--

"You see how Truth--empowered by that will which gives a giant's nerve to an infant's arm--has burst the monstrous mass of fraud that has endeavored to suppress it.--It calls now to Your Lordships, in the weak but clear tone of that Cherub, Innocence, whose voice is more persuasive than eloquence, more convincing than argument, whose look is supplication, whose tone is conviction,--it calls upon you for redress, it calls upon you for vengeance upon the oppressor, and points its heaven-directed hand to the detested, but unrepenting author of its wrongs!"

His description of the desolation brought upon some provinces of Oude by the misgovernment of Colonel Hannay, and of the insurrection at Goruckpore against that officer in consequence, is, perhaps, the most masterly portion of the whole speech:--

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