"he would not attribute them to any ill-purpose, or any ill-motive, but to ill-temper that had so run away with him that he scarcely knew what he meant or what he said." Events rapidly succeeded each other, scarcely a day intervened without some new shock to public feeling by the impetuous progress of the Revolution. The execution of the king decided many who had previously wavered in their opinions; the Whig party in Parliament dwindled to the smallest span, the great mass of the people were awe-struck by the daring act, and listened to the approach of war with less repugnance than was expected; nay, they even doubted the sagacity of Pitt, who seemed to hesitate, until he was urged on by his new associates. At length, on the 12th of February, the message came from the throne, announcing that a declaration of war had been made; an address was moved, assuring his Majesty that he might rely on the firm and effectual support of the representatives of the people in the prosecution of a just and necessary war. Mr. Fox's amendment still led to the expression of a hope that a pacification should be the means followed. Burke opposed him in language totally uncalled for; he laid great stress upon the fact that the healths of Fox and of Sheridan had been received with great enthusiasm in Paris. He dwelt upon the impiety of the French, their open avowal of Atheism, and was bitter upon his former friends, exulting at the diminution of their numbers, and designating them as a phalanx.

Sheridan greatly distinguished himself by his memorable reply; he brought the full force of his eloquence into play, mingling retort, ridicule, and argument in the most forcible manner. He said that he was provoked to rise by the insinuations and

charges of Mr. Burke against his honourable friend Fox. Never before had he indulged himself in such a latitude of ungoverned bitterness and spleen towards the man he still occasionally professed to respect. His ridicule of the smallness of the number of friends left to the object of his persecution ill became him, of all mankind; but he trusted, however small that number was, there ever would be found among them men not afraid, upon such a subject, to oppose truth and temper to passion and declamation, however eloquently urged or clamorously applauded. He made a bold attack on the different set of principles he had at different times urged, and taunted him with his own changes of views, which ought to forbid his allusion to the change of opinion in others. "A book was produced, and he was proceeding to read a former speech of his (Mr. Fox's), as if he had ever once retracted his opinion on this subject. When the Speaker called him to order, the honourable gentleman did not seem to take the interruption kindly, though certainly he ought to have been grateful for it; for never, sure, was there a man who had a greater interest in discouraging the practice of contrasting the past and present speeches, principles, and professions of any public man. Was the honourable gentleman ready to invite such a discussion respecting himself? If he were, and his consistency could be matter of regular question in that House, he did not scruple to assert that there was scarcely an iota of his new principles to which there was not a recorded contradiction in his former professions. Let a set of his works be produced, one member might read, paragraph by paragraph, his present doctrines, and another should refute every syllable of

them out of the preceding ones. It was a consolation to those who differed from his new principles to know where to resort for the best antidote to them."

His invectives against Burke were concluded by a bitter attack upon the Allies then marching on France; he preferred seeing England fight singlehanded against France. He feared the enemy less than the ally; he disliked the cause of war, but abhorred the company we were to fight in still more. He denounced the conduct of the Allies in the Polish Revolution, as having massacred the fairest offspring of virtue truth and valour. "Could the right honourable gentleman palliate these things? No! But had he ever arraigned them? Why had he never come to brandish in that House a Russian dagger, red in the heart's blood of the.free constitution of Poland? No; not a word, not a sigh, not an ejaculation for the destruction of all he had held up to the world as a model for reverence and imitation! In his heart is a record of brass for every error and excess of liberty, but on his tongue a sponge to blot out the foulest crimes and blackest treacheries of despotism." This allusion to the fact that on one occasion Burke went to the House of Commons, and, with prodigious attempt at stage effect, brandished a dagger which his fancy or bewildered imagination led him to believe was precisely similar to one which must be used in the French Revolution, told with great effect upon the House.

Mr. Sheridan gave notice of his intention to bring forward a motion relative to the existence of seditious practices in the country; and, with a view of obtaining a full attendance, a call of the House was ordered for the 4th of March, but when the

motion was to be brought forward after the ordinary business, no Mr. Sheridan made his appearance. Mr. Lambton apologised; Mr. Thornton moved an adjournment; Mr. Fox hoped everybody would be punctual; Sir Henry Houghton thought that a minister ought to be waited for; Mr. Pitt said he was always anxious to be punctual - and everything was said that could be said to gain time. and to allay the murmurs which began to rise, and the many little anecdotes which were whispered about Sheridan never being punctual, when at last he appeared, with a very proper apology in his mouth and one of his best speeches. He laughed at the supposed sedition, the lurking treason, and the panic; of the latter he gave a good picture, and placed his late friends, Wyndham and Burke, in the foreground. "This panic had already had a great effect, and, indeed, it was much too general an impression to proceed from real danger; a general panic was always created by phantoms and imaginary evils. It had been always so in the panics of armies; for instance, he believed that there was not once to be found in history an instance in which the panic of an army had proceeded from real danger; it always proceeded either from accident or some stratagem of the enemy. Indeed, the thing bore evidence for itself; had the danger been real, there must have been a difference of opinion as to the amount of it, for while there was a difference in the size and character of the understandings of men, there must be a difference in their opinions; but those who believed anything upon the tales of sedition, which he had before alluded to, believed everything that was said about it, and that of itself proved its fallacy. There were

numerous instances recorded, both in prose and verse, where nations had been misled, and had acted upon such false alarms. There were many instances in which a panic had been communicated by one class of men to the other.

'Sic quisque pavendo

Dat vires famæ: nulloque auctore malorum,
Quæ finxere timent. Nec solum vulgus inani
Percussum terrore pavet: Sed curia, et ipsi
Sedibus exiluere patres, invisaque belli

Consulibus fugiens mandat decreta senatus.'

"His friend (Mr. Wyndham) had been panic-struck, and now strengthened the hand of Government, who, last session, agreeable to a vulgar adage, 'Rolled his Majesty's ministers in the dirt.' At that period he pulled off the mask of perfidy, and declaimed loudly against that implicit confidence which some had argued ought to be placed in ministers. He now thought such arguments were impolitic, and no man was more strenuous for that confidence which he had before with so much warmth reprobated. Another friend (Mr. Burke), to whose doctrines Mr. Wyndham had become a convert, had also been panic-struck. He had been so affected that he saw nothing but a black and clouded sky-a bleak opposition, where there was not a shrub or bush to shelter him from the gloomy aspect of public affairs; but he had taken refuge in the ministerial gaberdine, where he hoped for security from the approaching storm."

It was in this speech that the motto of the Sun newspaper afforded him one of his happiest hits. The lines selected by the original proprietor of the journal were:

"" Solem quis dicere falsum Audeat?"