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MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF RT. HON. RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN VOL 2

THOMAS MOORE

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOL. II.

[Illustration]

CONTENTS TO VOL. II.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.

CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER X.

CHAPTER XI.

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

CHAPTER I.

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.

Among the native Princes who on the transfer of the sceptre of Tamerlane
to the East India Company became tributaries or rather slaves to that
Honorable body none seems to have been treated with more capricious
cruelty than Cheyte Sing the Rajah of Benares. In defiance of a solemn
treaty entered into between him and the government of Mr. Hastings by
which it was stipulated that besides his fixed tribute no further
demands of any kind should be made upon him new exactions were every
year enforced;--while the humble remonstrances of the Rajah against such
gross injustice were not only treated with slight but punished by
arbitrary and enormous fines. Even the proffer of bribe succeeded only in
being accepted [Footnote: This was the transaction that formed one of the
principal grounds of the Seventh Charge brought forward in the House of
Commons by Mr. Sheridan. The suspicious circumstances attending this
present are thus summed up by Mr. Mill: "At first perfect concealment of
the transaction--such measures however taken as may if afterwards
necessary appear to imply a design of future disclosure;--when
concealment becomes difficult and hazardous then disclosure
made."--_History of British India_.]--the exactions which it was
intended to avert being continued as rigorously as before. At length in
the year 1781 Mr. Hastings who invariably among the objects of his
government placed the interests of Leadenhall Street first on the list
and those of justice and humanity _longo intervallo_ after--finding
the treasury of the Company in a very exhausted state resolved to
sacrifice this unlucky Rajah to their replenishment; and having as a
preliminary step imposed upon him a mulct of L500000 set out
immediately for his capital Benares to compel the payment of it. Here
after rejecting with insult the suppliant advances of the Prince he put
him under arrest and imprisoned him in his own palace. This violation of
the rights and the roof of their sovereign drove the people of the whole
province into a sudden burst of rebellion of which Mr. Hastings himself
was near being the victim. The usual triumph however of might over
right ensued; the Rajah's castle was plundered of all its treasures and
his mother who had taken refuge in the fort and only surrendered it on
the express stipulation that she and the other princesses should pass out
safe from the dishonor of search was in violation of this condition
and at the base suggestion of Mr. Hastings himself [Footnote: In his
letter to the Commanding Officer at Bidgegur. The following are the terms
in which he conveys the hint: "I apprehend that she will contrive to
defraud the captors of a considerable part of the booty by being
suffered to retire _without examination_. But this is your
consideration and not mine. I should be very sorry that your officers
and soldiers lost any part of the reward to which they are so well
entitled; but I cannot make any objection as you must be the best judge
of the expediency of the _promised_ indulgence to the Rannee."]
rudely examined and despoiled of all her effects. The Governor-General
however in this one instance incurred the full odium of iniquity
without reaping any of its reward. The treasures found in the castle of
the Rajah were inconsiderable and the soldiers who had shown themselves
so docile in receiving the lessons of plunder were found inflexibly
obstinate in refusing to admit their instructor to a share. Disappointed
therefore in the primary object of his expedition the Governor-General
looked round for some richer harvest of rapine and the Begums of Oude
presented themselves as the most convenient victims. These Princesses
the mother and grandmother of the reigning Nabob of Oude had been left
by the late sovereign in possession of certain government-estates or
jaghires as well as of all the treasure that was in his hands at the
time of his death and which the orientalized imaginations of the English
exaggerated to an enormous sum. The present Nabob had evidently looked
with an eye of cupidity on this wealth and had been guilty of some acts
of extortion towards his female relatives in consequence of which the
English government had interfered between them--and had even guaranteed
to the mother of the Nabob the safe possession of her property without
any further encroachment whatever. Guarantees and treaties however were
but cobwebs in the way of Mr. Hastings; and on his failure at Benares he
lost no time in concluding an agreement with the Nabob by which (in
consideration of certain measures of relief to his dominions) this Prince
was bound to plunder his mother and grandmother of all their property
and place it at the disposal of the Governor-General. In order to give a
color of justice to this proceeding it was [Footnote: "It was the
practice of Mr. Hastings (says Burke in his fine speech on Mr. Pitt's
India Bill March 22 1786) to examine the country and wherever he found
money to affix guilt. A more dreadful fault could not be alleged against
a native than that he was rich."] pretended that these Princesses had
taken advantage of the late insurrection at Benares to excite a similar
spirit of revolt in Oude against the reigning Nabob and the English
government. As Law is but too often in such cases the ready accomplice
of Tyranny the services of the Chief Justice Sir Elijah Impey were
called in to sustain the accusations; and the wretched mockery was
exhibited of a Judge travelling about in search of evidence [Footnote:
This journey of the Chief Justice in search of evidence is thus happily
described by Sheridan in the Speech:--"When on the 28th of November he
was busied at Lucknow on that honorable business and when three days
after he was found at Chunar at the distance of 200 miles still
searching for affidavits and like Hamlet's ghost exclaiming 'Swear'
his progress on that occasion was so whimsically rapid compared with the
gravity of his employ that an observer would be tempted to quote again
from the same scene 'Ha! Old Truepenny canst thou mole so fast i' the
ground?' Here however the comparison ceased; for when Sir Elijah made
his visit to Lucknow 'to whet the almost blunted purpose' of the Nabob
his language was wholly different from that of the poet--for it would
have been totally against his purpose to have said

Taint not thy mind nor let thy soul contrive
Against thy mother aught."] for the express purpose of proving a
charge upon which judgment had been pronounced and punishment decreed
already.

The Nabob himself though sufficiently ready to make the wealth of those
venerable ladies occasionally minister to his wants yet shrunk back
with natural reluctance from the summary task now imposed upon him; and
it was not till after repeated and peremptory remonstrances from Mr.
Hastings that he could be induced to put himself at the head of a body
of English troops and take possession by unresisted force of the town
and palace of these Princesses. As the treasure however was still
secure in the apartments of the women--that circle within which even the
spirit of English rapine did not venture--an expedient was adopted to
get over this inconvenient delicacy. Two aged eunuchs of high rank and
distinction the confidential agents of the Begums were thrown into
prison and subjected to a course of starvation and torture by which it
was hoped that the feelings of their mistresses might be worked upon and
a more speedy surrender of their treasure wrung from them. The plan
succeeded:--upwards of 500000_l_. was procured to recruit the
finances of the Company; and thus according to the usual course of
British power in India rapacity but levied its contributions in one
quarter to enable war to pursue its desolating career in another.

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 [Footnote: Of the
lengths to which this zeal could sometimes carry his fancy and language
rather perhaps than his actual feelings the following anecdote is a
remarkable proof. On one of the days of the trial Lord ---- who was
then a boy having been introduced by a relative into the Manager's box
Burke said to him "I am glad to see you here--I shall be still gladder
to see you there--(pointing to the Peers' seats) I hope you will be _in
at the death_--I should like to _blood_ you."] 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

"I am sure you will have the goodness to excuse the liberty I take with
you when you consider the interest which I have and which the Public
have (the said Public being at least half an inch a taller person than
I am) in the use of Mr. Sheridan's abilities. I know that his mind is
seldom unemployed; but then like all such great and vigorous minds it
takes an eagle flight by itself and we can hardly bring it to rustle
along the ground with us birds of meaner wing in coveys. I only beg
that you will prevail on Mr. Sheridan to be with us _this day_ at
half after three in the Committee. Mr. Wombell the Paymaster of Oude
is to be examined there _to-day_. Oude is Mr. Sheridan's particular
province; and I do most seriously ask that he would favor us with his
assistance. What will come of the examination I know not; but without
him I do not expect a great deal from it; with him I fancy we may get
out something material. Once more let me entreat your interest with Mr.
Sheridan and your forgiveness for being troublesome to you and do me the
justice to believe me with the most sincere respect

"Madam your most obedient

"and faithful humble Servant

_"Thursday 9 o'clock._

"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

_"Monday._

"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." [Footnote: For this letter as well as some
other valuable communications I am indebted to the kindness of Mr.
Burgess--the Solicitor and friend of Sheridan during the last twenty
years of his life.]

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 [Footnote: The converse assertion is almost equally true. Mr.
Fox used to ask of a printed speech "Does it read well?" and if
answered in the affirmative said "Then it was a bad speech."] 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:--

"Major Scott comes to your bar--describes the shortness of
time--represents Mr. Hastings as it were _contracting for_ a
character--putting his memory _into commission_--making
_departments_ for his conscience. A number of friends meet together
and he knowing (no doubt) that the accusation of the Commons had been
drawn up by a Committee thought it necessary as a point of punctilio
to answer it by a Committee also. One furnishes the raw material of fact
the second spins the argument and the third twines up the conclusion;
while Mr. Hastings with a master's eye is cheering and looking over
this loom. He says to one 'You have got my good faith in your
hands--_you_ my veracity to manage. Mr. Shore I hope you will make
me a good financier--Mr. Middleton you have my humanity in
commission.'--When it is done he brings it to the House of Commons and
says 'I was equal to the task. I knew the difficulties but I scorn
them: here is the truth and if the truth will convict me I am content
myself to be the channel of it.' His friends hold up their heads and
say 'What noble magnanimity! This must be the effect of conscious and
real innocence.' Well it is so received it is so argued upon--but it
fails of its effect.

"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.

"After such an attempt we certainly are left in doubt to decide to
_which_ set of his friends Mr. Hastings is least obliged those who
assisted him in making his defence or those who advised him to deny it."

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
...

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