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away by his subject all minor thoughts were dissipated by the excitement of his language, the fervour of his manner, and the wondrous lustre and expression of his eye, so that when he ceased all seemed to wait with the hope of something more.

This first attempt made by Sheridan to address the House naturally excited great interest. He was heard with particular attention and unusual silence; he replied to a complaint against his election for Stafford by means of bribery and corruption; he defended his constituents from an accusation made by the lowest and most unprincipled voters. He thought it a great hardship, and wished that some adequate penalties should be inflicted on those who traduced and stigmatised a respectable body of men. Mr. Rigby did not allow these observations to pass unnoticed, but ridiculed the idea of any member being concerned for the character of his constituents. Mr. Fox threw his shield over the young member, and made some sarcastic remarks on the ministerial members, who chiefly robbed and plundered their constituents, and afterwards affected to despise them. Sheridan himself took the opportunity, on the next occasion of his addressing the House, which was a few evenings after, when he spoke on the vote of thanks to Earl Cornwallis and General Sir Henry Clinton for their conduct in America, to show that he was not likely tamely to submit to the taunts of Mr. Rigby. He apologised to him for not answering some things that had fallen from him in the same ludicrous strain in which he chose to view everything, excepting what related to his own immediate interest. He acknowledged the gentleman had a kind of drollery and humour, but he liked his ingenuity,

his humour, and his counsels better than his political arguments.

Sheridan's next speech, which occurred on the second reading of the bill for "The Better Regulation of His Majesty's Civil List," was the first indication that he gave of his readiness of reply, and of the happy tact with which he could seize on the observations of an adversary, and turn the weapons of ridicule upon the practised debater. Mr. Courtenay, instead of discussing a serious and grave question, which involved the characters of the ministry for retaining several useless, expensive, and inconvenient places, and diverting the money of the public from its proper channels into the purse of individuals, attacked the opposition members, and observed that "O liberty! O virtue! O my country!" had been the incessant, pathetic, but fallacious cry of former oppositions. The present, he was sure, acted on purer motives. They wept over their bleeding country; yet the patriot "eye, in a fine frenzy rolling," deigned to cast a wishful squint on riches and honour enjoyed by the minister and his venal supporters. He compared their conduct to the sentimental alderman in Hogarth's print, who, when his daughter is dying, wears a face of parental grief and solicitude; but it is to secure a diamond ring which he is drawing off her finger. He proceeded, in a ludicrous strain, to point out the anxious wish of the opposition to breathe a fresh air, but implored them not to put the drag-chain upon a rising state. Mr. Sheridan, after reproving Mr. Courtenay for the unsuitable manner in which he had introduced his opinion, observed that, if they could not act with dignity, they ought to debate with decency; that he would not attempt seriously to reply

to that which had an infusion of ridicule in every part; but two of his similes he must take notice of. The one was that the opposition was envious of those who basked in court sunshine, and were desirous only of getting into their places. To this insinuation he would reply, that though the sun afforded a genial warmth, it also occasioned an intemperate heat that tainted and infected everything that it reflected on; that this excessive heat tended to corrupt, as well as to cherish; to putrefy, as well as to animate; to dry and soak up the wholesome juices of the body politic, and to turn the whole into one mass of corruption. If those, therefore, who sat near him did not enjoy so genial a warmth as the honourable gentleman and those who, like him, kept near the nobleman in the blue riband (Lord North), he was certain that they breathed a purer air, an air less infected and less corrupt. The drag-chain of the gentleman's allusion was never applied but when a machine was going down hill, and then it was applied wisely. He concluded a felicitous speech by assuring the honourable gentleman that the most serious part of his argument appeared the most ludicrous.

It was on the 5th of March that the first parliamentary effort demanding talent and judgment was made by Sheridan, and the universal opinion expressed in favour both of the matter and manner of his speech gave him a decided position in the political world. Mr. Sheridan had previously given notice of his intention to bring forward a motion for the better regulation of the police of Westminster, and he took the opportunity of coming before the House with a well-digested view of the circumstances which had presented themselves during the month of June in [129]

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the past year, when the metropolis was left for several days at the mercy of an ignorant and fanatic mob. His motions were :

"1. That the military force entrusted to his Majesty by Parliament cannot justifiably be applied to the dispersing illegal and tumultuous assemblies of the people, without waiting for directions from the civil magistrates, but where the outrages have broke forth with such violence that all civil authority is overborne, and the immediate subversion of all legal government directly threatened."

"2. That the necessity of issuing that unprecedented order to the military, on the 7th of June last, to act without waiting for directions from the civil magistrates, affords a strong presumption of the defective state of the magistracy of Westminster, where the riots began."

"3. That a committee be appointed to inquire into the conduct of the magistracy and civil power of the city of Westminster, with respect to the riots in June last; and to examine and report to the House the present state of the magistracy and government of the said city."

The language he employed was not peculiarly striking, but it was to the point.

On the 13th of May, and on the 17th, the readiness of Sheridan excited much amusement in the House. On the first occasion he made some observations on lotteries, and concluded with observing, that "as the learned gentleman (the Solicitor-General) who brought in the bill had already on one occasion stood forward, not only as the censor morum, but as the arbiter elegantiarum, at once the Cato and the Petronius of the age, he hoped he would be active in his new

character, and join in putting a stop to lottery gaming, by bringing in a bill to abolish all the present lottery offices, and preventing the opening of any new ones in future."

On the other, on the bill for preventing desertion, Sheridan pithily observed "that the honourable gentleman (Mr. Penton) had omitted to take notice of one objection adduced by Mr. Dunning, which was, that when sailors, suspected to be deserters, were brought before a justice of the peace by virtue of this Act, though the suspicion turned out to be groundless, they might nevertheless, by authority of former statutes, be impressed. He ironically complimented the Board of Admiralty for the high sense they seemed here to entertain of the honour of British sailors; it might be illustrated by a very trite anecdote of Julius Cæsar, for, like his wife, the character of our seamen must be as clear of suspicion as of impeachment; they not only must not be deserters, but not suspected to be so."

A few words upon the bill to amend and explain the Marriage Act, brought in by Mr. Fox, gave that great leader of the opposition an opportunity of complimenting, somewhat insidiously, his friend Mr. Sheridan, who opposed Mr. Fox's favourite views. "He said his honourable friend (Mr. Fox), who brought in the bill, appeared not to be aware that, if he carried the clause enabling girls to marry at sixteen, he would do an injury to that liberty of which he had always shown himself the friend, and promote domestic tyranny, which he could consider only as little less intolerable than public tyranny. If girls were allowed to marry at sixteen, they would, he conceived, be abridged of that happy freedom of

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