MR. SHERIDAN.

I have retained the compliment with which the following speech is prefaced in the report from which it is taken, "that it was the most brilliant reply that perhaps was ever made in the House of Commons," because I am half inclined to be of the same opinion. The expression brilliant belongs peculiarly to Sheridan's style of eloquence. For brilliant fancy, for vivacity of description, for animation, for acuteness, for wit, for good sense and real discrimination, for seeing the question at once just in the right point of view, being neither perplexed with the sophisms of others, nor led away by the warmth of his own imagination, he was (I do not say he is) equal to any of his competitors; for he has got none left (except indeed Windham, who is however as different a man as can be). I have made more fuss about some other speakers, but to say the truth, he is about as good as the best of them, He was undoubtedly the second public man after Fox, both with respect to talents, and firmness to his principles.

His Speech in Reply to Lord Mornington.

THE speech of Lord Mornington drew from Mr. Sheridan the most brilliant reply that perhaps was ever made in the British house of commons. He admired, he said, the emphasis of the noble lord, in read. ing his voluminous extracts from his various French documents; he admired too the ingenuity he had displayed in his observations on those extracts; but most of all he admired that the noble lord should have taken up so much time in quoting passages, of which

not one in ten was to the purpose. No part of the king's speech, it seems, had more fully met the appro bation of the noble lord, than that in which he warned us to keep in sight the real grounds and origin of the present war. For his part, he knew not how to keep in sight what had never been in his view. The noble lord however appeared to understand his majesty's allusion, and to recollect the means by which we had been brought into the war. We had been brought into it by repeated declamations on all that the phrensy, the folly, and rashness of individuals in France had either said or written, by which the passions of this country could be roused, or their fears excited, in order to se cond the views of those who had determined to plunge us into it at all events. The noble lord conceived, that a repetition of the same means which had induced us to commence hostilities was the best means to persuade us to continue them. Hence the farrago of the well known extracts and anecdotes from the noble lord. But what was the sum? That enormities had been committed in France, which disgusted and sickened the soul. This was most true; but what relation had these to England? And, if they had, what did it prove? What, but that eternal and unalterable truth, that a long established despotism so far degraded and debased human nature as to render its subjects, on the first recovery of their rights, unfit for the exercise of them? But he should always meet with reprobation the inference from this truth, that those who had long been slaves ought ever to continue so. That we and all the powers of Europe had reason to dread the madness of the French, Mr. Sheridan agreed; but was this difficult to be account ed for? Wild and unsettled as they must neces sarily be from the possession of such power, the sur rounding states had goaded them into a paroxysm madness, fury, and desperation. We called them mon sters, and hunted them as monsters. The conspiracy of Pilnitz, and the brutal threats of the abettors of that

plot, had to answer for all the additional horrors that had since disgraced humanity. We had covenanted for their extermination, and now complained that they turned upon us with the fury that we had inspired. The noble lord, said he, after dwelling so long on the pamphlet of Brissot, draws this important conclusion: That the government adopted by France cannot stand. I agree to his conclusion; and what remains but to leave it to the natural workings of the discords it is calculated to engender? If it will not stand itself, it is unnecessary for us to attack it. The noble lord has attempted to shew from his pamphlet, that France has not only been the aggressor in this war, but that it is still desirous of continuing it. His quotations have however only proved, that after a short experience all parties retracted their opinions and practices; and so far from boasting of having provoked a war with England, the strongest reproach that the different factions could throw against each other, was the accusation of having been accessary to involving the country in a war with the only power in Europe, with whom France was eager to continue at peace. All this was proved from the quotations made by the noble lord, and the pamphlet proved to a certain. ty, that both parties were earnest to avoid a rupture with England, and that there are none who may not at this moment be reasonably supposed to be inclined to put a stop to hostilities.

The noble lord, continued Mr. Sheridan, thinks he has established a great deal, in proving that all parties in the convention were fond of the system of fraternizing. The noble lord would have been more candid had he dated the origin of the system; it would not have been less fair to have noticed that this system has been totally abandoned. If he refers to it as a motive for our entertaining a just jealously of them, he ought to admit their abandonment of it as a ground for our abandoning that jealously. If their professing such a doctrine was a provocation to hostility on our part, their retract

ing it is an opening to reconciliation. From the moment they solemnly disavowed all intention or disposition to interfere in the governments of other nations, why should not we have renounced any intention of interfering in theirs? But instead of this, what has been our conduct? We continue to remind and reproach the French with their unjust and insolent conduct in respect to Brabant and Geneva, at the same time that we adopt ourselves, and act upon, the very principles they have abjured; or rather upon principles of still more extravagant insolence and injustice. Who did not reprobate the folly and. profligacy of endeavouring to force upon the people of Brabant French forms, French principles, and French creeds? of dragging them to the tree of liberty, and forcing them to dance round its root, or to hang upon its branches? But what has been the conduct of Great Britain, so loud in the condemnation of such tryanny under the mask of liberty? What has been her conduct to Genoa? to Switzerland? to Tuscany? and, as far as she dared, to Denmark and to Sweden ? for her insolence has been accompanied by its usual attendant, meanness. Her injustice has been without magnanimity. She wished to embark the world in the confederacy against France, the moment she thought proper to join it the neutrality, of which she herself boasted but a month before, became instantly a heinous crime in any other state of Europe. And how has she proceeded? With those that are powerful, and whose assistance would have been important, she has only expostulated, and prevaricated; but in how little as well as odious a light has she appeared, when threatening and insulting those petty states, whose least obedience to her tyrannic mandates might bring great peril on themselves, and whose utmost efforts could give but little aid to the allies? The noble lord has, with a just indignation, execrated the cruel and perfidious conduct of the fraternizing French to the Brabanters; but will he defend the fraternity of the just and magnanimous English to the

Genoese? Have we not adopted the very words as well as spirit of democratic tyranny? We say to the timid helpless Genoese, "You have no right to judge for yourselves; we know what is best for you; you must and shall, make a common cause with us; you must adopt our principles, our views, our hatreds, and our perils; you must tremble at dangers which do not threaten you, and resent injuries which have never been offered to you; you must shed your republican blood in the cause of royalty; in short, you must fraternize with us; you must be our friends, our allies. If you hesitate, we will beat your walls about your ears, slaughter your people, and leave your city in smoaking ruins, an example to other petty states of the magnanimity of the British arms, and of the justice and moderation of British counsels."

With respect to M. Gennet's unwarrantable desire to introduce a fraternizing spirit into America, Mr. Sheridan noticed the different conduct pursued by that nation and the court of London. Both, he said, had been equally insulted; attempts had been equally made to spread the sentiments of the republic; yet from the different counsels that directed the two nations, America remained the undismayed, undegraded, and unembarrassed spectator of the broils of Europe; while we are engaged in a struggle (as we had been this day told by ministers) not for our glory and prosperity, but for our actual existence

as a nation.

Mr. Sheridan next noticed the opinion of the noble lord, founded upon Brissot's pamphlet, in which the minister Monge is mentioned as having promised in October, to have thirty ships of the line at sea from Brest in April, and fifty in July, that the French had always intended to make war against us. This, however, was prevented by the vigorous measures of ministry. What were these vigorous measures of a vigilant ministry, that defeated the equipment of fifty ships of the line? They stopped two corn ships destined for France! But how