perhaps might not have so taken to heart his face, may try his hand at hers; I never will. precedency. La Motte. She has points about her. Anjou. Ay truly; too many. Were her nose but awry, she might see to read through it. Then (mercy upon us!) those long narrow ferret's teeth, intersecting a face of such proportions, that it is like a pared cucumber set on end. And then those foxy eyelashes and eyebrows! And those wildfire eyes, equal in volubility to her tongue and her affections, and leering like a panther's when it yawns. Gramercy! the fellow who pretends Le can fill up the trenches and pitfalls in my Sacre! the skinny old goshawk, all talon and plumage. By St. Martin! I would not have her . . no, not even to nail against my stable-door. I do not wonder that Dudley requires a couple of wives to take the taste of this wormwood out of his mouth. My wonder is, that he should have been at the trouble to murder the same number of handsome ones to make room for her. I myself would have done a good deal, perhaps as much, or nearly so, to get a kingdom! but my charger could never overleap this bar. No, La Motte! I must be contented with the Netherlands. WINDHAM AND SHERIDAN. Windham. It is seldom, Mr. Sheridan, that we | how the Grenvilles and Temples have always have met anywhere out of the House of Commons speculated on this grand Exchange. They have these last two years; and I rejoice in the opportunity of expressing my admiration of your generous conduct, on an occasion in which the country at large, and I particularly as minister, was deeply interested. Sheridan. I am happy, sir, to be countenanced by your favourable opinion on any: but I presume you now refer to my speech on the mutiny at the Nore. Windham. Indeed I do : you stood nobly forth from your party. Never was behaviour more gnominious than the behaviour of the Whigs has been, systematically, since the commencement of the war. Whatever they could do or suggest to the detriment of their country, or to the advanceDent of France, they seized on with avidity. But you manfully came forward and apart from those traitors, declaring that insubordination should be reduced, and that rebellion should be crushed. I heartily wish, and confidently hope, that you will display the same energy and decision in the great measure of the Union now projected with Keland. Sheridan. I have heard nothing about it, as kely to be carried speedily into execution. But the vast number of indigent and worthless people to have lately been made Irish peers, might tite a suspicion that something of moment was agitation. Many must be bought over again. Neh men, for instance, as Hely Hutchinson, Lord Framel, Lord Clare, and other exhalations of the Mg and dunghill, who have always in readiness ar the service of any Administration a menace, defiance, and a pistol; such men will never be ented with the few thousands of income they ave in various ways obtained: their demands rise with their services; and unless the demands are satisfied, the petitioners will turn into patriots. In such a course is usually the begining or the termination of public men: seldom th. The Irish have begun to learn arithmetic in the English school. Fortunes in this country have risen so high and so suddenly on the base f politics, as to have attracted the gaze and to ave excited the aspiration of Ireland. She sees VOL. II. bought in and sold out with singular discretion. Hence a family of small pretensions to antiquity, far from affluent until recently, has been somewhat enriched at every generation. Lord Grenville, who receives forty thousand a-year from his tellership of the Exchequer, which in time of peace brought him scarcely a tenth, was strenuous for war; while Pitt hung back, in suspense for a moment whether he should comply with the king's wishes or retire from office. The Duke of Portland, as you know, stipulated for a renewal of the lease of Marybone Park, before he would join the ministry with his adherents. The value of this lease is calculated at two hundred thousand. The Irish peers may fairly demand something handsome for the surrender of their power and patronage; I should have added their dignities, had I not been aware that either to laugh or to excite laughter, is, at times, unseasonable. Windham. The terms are not exactly known at present; and indeed the business is so compli cated, that doubts are beginning to arise whether the scheme will be practicable in the present year. Sheridan. Much depends on the amount of secret service money the parliament will consent to vote. This union might be the greatest blessing that ever was conferred on Ireland. But when I consider how unjustly, how harshly, how treacherously, she has been treated by all administrations, my suspicions rise far above my hopes. It is rumoured that the conditions (which however there will be time enough to reconsider and to modify) are less favourable than were granted to Scotland: and that what is, and always has been in every country under heaven, the main object, is not to be conceded: I mean the religion of the majority. On the abolition of episcopacy in Scotland, its revenues were applied to the religious and moral education of the people, who renounced the old religion, rejected the formulary of the English, and chose another. Surely then in common justice, to say nothing of policy, nothing of conciliation, those from whom churches and church-lands were taken N away, having at least as fair a claim to such things as those who never were in possession of them, should receive the plunder back. In doing this to the full extent, you would still do less for Ireland than was done for Scotland. Windham. We have always been tender in touching vested rights. Sheridan. To my apprehension you were not very tender in your touch on the vestment of the Irish Catholic church. The vestment had indeed too many folds and flounces about it, and, instead of covering the brawny shoulders of twenty or thirty fathers, might have been conveniently cut up for the shirts and shifts of as many hundred children. But you never drew out scissars or measure for that purpose: you only stripped the vesture off one fat fellow to clap it on another fatter. Windham. True enough. The bishop of Derry's landed property extends, I hear, over a hundred and fifty thousand acres; and cottagers pay thirty shillings a year for half acres, not the best, of this very land. Suppose that at the termination of the war, after hard cruises, hard battles, and harder blockades, all our admirals return home, many with amputated limbs, many with incurable wounds, many (indeed most) with broken or impaired constitutions; raise the number of them to half a hundred; and the consolidated pay of these half hundred great and glorious defenders of their country, will be less than the pay of one churchman. Sheridan. And it is painful to think of how much shorter date. Windham. Have they no reason to complain of such inequality? have they no right to check and correct it? Windham. There are gentlemen in the House of Commons who insist that where a single man, woman, or child, exists in any parish, that parish should enjoy its parson, if Protestant. Sheridan. But there are many parishes in which there is not a single Protestant, man, woman, or child: however, as there is a steeple, and not only a steeple, but a pulpit, no doubt there should also be a minister of religion for their benefit. If towns which contain several thousand inhabitants have no representative at all, there would be no worse hardship in fewer than one hundred having no established pastor. But this hardship might not befall them : for they might elect one; and they might themselves pay him proportionally to the service he renders; or they might remove into a more convenient and less contracted fellowship. The most pious and serious of the English people are taught the doctrines of the English church by unendowed ministers. The followers of Wesley do not hanker after gowns and surplices; at least such gowns and surplices as mount the pulpit. Well-educated young men of his persuasion are always in readiness to accept the cure of souls. It is only the earnest and patient who are likely to file the old rust and new paint off the crucifix. The Wesleyans may be too impetuous, heady, and frothy; but a gutter that runs with rapidity is less unwholesome than a stagnant ditch. I feel that I lie open to a charge of partiality in this recommendation of the Methodists; but I do assure you I am not about to join them: and I venture to hope that your smile is not a smile of incredulity. Windham. Be perfectly at ease. But seriously; in turning out this acid on such putridity, there would be a violent fermentation: there would All of what are called church lands belong be animosities and conflicts. However, what to the state, as the church itself does; and harm, if there should be? Turn out the weasel bishoprics have, since the Reformation, not only against the rat, and, at least while they are fightbeen curtailed, but abolished. If Parliament can ing, neither of them can corrode the rafters or take away a whole bishopric, it surely can take infest the larder. Your countrymen are a joyous away a moiety, especially that moiety which | and light-hearted people, and run with alacrity bishops care least about, the temporalities. Griev- to festivals and fairs. They would not so readily ous responsibility would be thus removed from fall in with Calvinism; they are more disposed them. No longer a necessity to rise early and to fighting, frolic, and pardon. to sit down late, for the purpose of supplying the indigent and afflicted: no longer a solicitude in seeking out the faithful, merciful, discreet, and active almoner: no longer the worldly care of laying aside the larger part of their revenues, in just and exact proportions, for families more or less numerous, for curates more or less laborious, "for sick widows and young children." In other parts of Europe to which the Reformation has extended, not only the religion but also its emoluments have been revised and corrected. Government in England should exercise this authority where required. Where there are no, or only few, communicants of the Anglican church in Ireland, it is expedient for them to remove to places where there are many. At all events I would maintain no church establishment for a less number than a hundred adults. Sheridan. Frolic and pardon they would never find among the Calvinists, who however in strict justice would amply make out the difference, with fighting. Windham. We will revert to the right which all governments possess, of curtailing or abolishing the hire of their servants: I admit it. The question at last resolves itself into mere expediency. If our government, after a war, reduces the pay of its soldiers, and abolishes altogether the pay of its sailors, it may consistently, justly, and legally, do the same in regard to the church militant. Whether the pay arises from a turf or from a counter, no matter. Sheridan. Apply the principle more especially to Ireland. A nation has been misruled for above six centuries by its conqueror. The conqueror has derived the most powerful and efficient aid from it, against all his enemies, and wishes to derive more. To accomplish which, a sudden thought strikes him, which never entered his head until now; that by rendering it more flourishing, he renders it more effectual in his defence. Another sudden thought strikes him. He remembers that, a century ago, he made a compact of Union with another out-lying country, and that both grew richer and happier instantaneously. The out-lying country had fought, and would fight again, for the establishment and maintenance of its religion. The conqueror cares little about the matter, as far as God and conscience are concerned, but very much about the interests of some riotous idlers and rich absentees. Ireland would be contented with a less measure of justice than was meted out to Scotland: and you may gain ten-fold as much by it. Scotland has no important bays and harbours: Ireland has more than any country of the same extent. Windham. More than Norway? Sheridan. Those of Norway are unimportant, although capacious. Surrounded by barren rocks, affording no anchorage, there is neither traffic nor population. Ireland has better and more than all France. What wars would not England engage in to wrest them from an enemy! What a bustle in the last century about Dunkirk and in the century before about such a pitiful hole as Calais ! A single act of beneficence, of justice, of policy, of policy the most advantageous to ourselves, would render these noble bays and harbours ours for ever, guarded at no expense to us, by as brave and loyal a nation as any upon earth. Can stubbornness and stupidity be imagined grosser, than in refusing to curtail the superfluity of about eight hundred inefficient drones, detested in general by the majority of their neighbours, when it would conciliate eight millions, and save the perpetual expenditure of a standing army to controll them. Windham. His Majesty is averse to concession. Sheridan. His Majesty was averse to conces son to America: and into what disasters and disgraces, unexperienced, unapprehended, unbeard of among us until His Majesty's reign, did this pig-headedness of His Majesty thrust us down! By reducing the English Church in Ireland to the same condition of wealth as the reformed churches of Germany; by selling all church-lands there, and by devoting to the religious and moral education of the people the whole proceeds, in just proportion to the Papal and Protestant communicants, you would conciliate all farsighted, all humane, all equitable men throughout the island. The lands held under the Crown might also be added. Windham. Now indeed you are a visionary, Mr. Sheridan ! You could sooner uproot the whole island from the Atlantic, than tear from His Majesty an acre of the worst land in it. Sheridan. I do believe in my conscience he would rather lose the affection of half his subjects than the carcase of one fat sheep. I am informed that all his possessions in Ireland never yielded him five thousand a-year. Give him ten; and he will chuckle at over-reaching you; and not you only, but his own heirs for ever; as he chuckled when he cheated his eldest son of what he pocketed in twenty years from Cornwall, Lancashire, and Wales. The crown-lands in Ireland, unprofitable at present, are large enough to support half a million subjects, reduced to poverty and starvation by his oppressive policy and unjust wars. Windham. You have been suggesting two impracticabilities, however desirable. Sheridan. Ministers then have been suggesting another, the Union. They may bring about an Act of Parliament called an Act of Union: but they will be necessitated to piece out their parchment with cartridge paper. Windham. We can have fighting enough on easier terms elsewhere. If the framers of the Union are equitable and indulgent, Ireland in half a century from its commencement may contribute ten millions a year to the national revenue. If they are unjust, not only will she contribute less than half that amount, but she will oblige the Government to keep up a standing army to coerce her. Instead of furnishing us with a third of our forces, she will paralyse a third of them and keep them sedentary. Sheridan. Beside, she will become a temptation to France, and even to inferior Powers, to provoke us with aggression and insult, showing them that one hand is tied up behind us. What a farce Windham. By what I hear, there is also an- in the meanwhile is the diversionary talk about ether thing which may disincline the Irish from the abolition of the slave-trade! What insanity the Union. Not only will the property of the to think of throwing down fifteen or twenty milIrish Catholic Church be withholden from its first lions to compass an impracticability, to consolidestination, from which destination, I acknow-date a dream! Half the money laid out upon alge, it was forcibly and violently torn away, bat a certain part of our own national debt will be saddled on that people. Sheridan. What! when we lie on the debtor's side, and they on the creditor's? If Ireland were paid for her soldiers, in the same proportion as we pay for the Hanoverians and Hessians and other Germans, what a balance would she strike against Ireland, not in an unmanageable mass all at once, but million by million, year after year, would within ten years render that country prosperous and contented: not however if you resolve to proscribe her religion, to strip its ministers to the skin, and to parade before them and their communicants, on their own ground, your greasy pastors; mere boils and blotches covered with the vestments purloined from their church. Windham. Indeed it would be well, and certainly is expedient, to conciliate so brave a people. When we are richer we may encourage their agriculture and their fisheries. Sheridan. They want no other encouragement from you than equity and security. Let the people be contented; and tranquillity is necessarily the result. Let tranquillity be established, and speculators will cover land and sea with English capital. Windham. As politicians we may rejoice in a religion which, were the natives in easy circumstances, would be favourable to the fisheries. Sheridan. At the present time there are millions of Roman Catholics in the country who never tasted fish. Windham. It must be acknowledged that little has been hitherto effected for the comforts of the people. The first man that ever made a movement to assist them was Lord Bacon. He would have given to them the same advantages of every kind as we ourselves enjoy. Humanity was never very urgent with him; but his consummate wisdom prompted to this counsel. I am afraid we must wait until we have men equally wise among us before the counsel is taken. Sheridan. What hope then? No nation in Europe has treated the conquered so iniquitously as the English have treated the Irish. We must go back to Sparta and the Helots for a parallell. But Sparta did not send out missionaries to establish her pure faith in other lands: Sparta did not piously curse her poorer citizens if they happened to enjoy one day in seven. We, having such advantages over her, may feel somewhat too confident of God's countenance and blessing, and we may at last encroach and push his patience until he loudly cries out and curses us. Windham. I indulge in few golden dreams about the green island; but certainly no country is capable of such improvement so easily effected. Sheridan. Henry the Fourth expressed a wish and indulged a hope to see the day, when every householder in France should have a pullet for dinner once a-week: I only wish that every poor Irishman could add a duck annually to his household. Pig and duck (as Lord Castlereagh would express it, if he knew anything or cared anything about the matter) play into one another's hands very nicely. Even this addition to the comforts of an Irish family is little to be expected from the framers of the Union. MARY AND Mary. Bothwell! Bothwell! what would you have? I can hardly believe my senses. It was wrong, it was very wrong indeed, to commit such an outrage. You forget my condition, my station, and what you owe me . . the allegiance, the duty.. Bothwell. Nay, nay, my gracious queen! I thought of nothing else all our ride. What a sweet fresh colour it has given my royal mistress! O could the ugly Elizabeth but see it! I should hail you queen of England the next hour. Mary. How dare you call my cousin ugly? and to my face! And do you think she would give the crown of England to look at me? O you silly man! But what can you mean? Bothwell. I mean, she would burst and crack at it, like a dry and gnarly log of mountain-ash on a Christmas hearth. BOTHWELL. me very sad. I will never be so cruel to you as you have been to me. Bothwell. The laws too; the laws forsooth! Neither in our country, nor in any other, do the laws touch anything higher than the collar of the most diminutive thief: and a lawyer is always at hand to change his coat and character with him for a groat. Mary. With what derision and scorn you speak of laws and lawyers! You little know how vin. dictive they are. Bothwell. Faith! we are not well acquainted; but I know enough of them to know that. Mary. Are not you afraid? Bothwell. I tremble in the presence of majesty and beauty. Where they are, there lies my law. I do confess I am afraid, and hugely; for I feel hard knockings (there must surely be all the Pan Mary. At me! at my colour! I can not help laughing at your absurdity, most wicked, flatter-dects) where my heart was lately. ing, deceiving creature! Bothwell. I flatter! I deceive! I never try to do what I am likely to fail in here I must here all must. Mary. I wish you had indeed failed altogether. Bothwell. So then, my royal dove! I did not quite? Mary. Impudent man! go away. Ah Bothwell! you are now a traitor after this. They would treat you like one. The laws call it abduction . . and God knows what beside. Bothwell. Treat me like a traitor! me! the truest man among them. Yea, if I would let them, and this fair hand could sign it. Mary. O heaven! Do not talk so; you make Mary. You never had any heart, or you would not have treated me in this manner. Bothwell. You shall want nothing with me: you shall never pine after the past. Mary. Ah but! ah but! indeed, indeed, good Bothwell! he was very handsome; and you must acknowledge it.. if he had only been less cross and jealous and wayward and childish .. Bothwell. Too childish by half for you, fair lady! and he was all those other little things beside. Mary. What is over is over! God forgive you, bad man! Sinner! serpent! it was all you. And you dare smile! Shame upon you, varlet! Yes; now you look as you should do. Nobody ought to be more contrite. You may speak again, if you will only speak to the purpose. Come; no wicked thoughts! I mean if you will speak reasonably. But you really are a very, very wicked man indeed. Bothwell. Happy the man who hears those blessed words! they grow but on soft sweet lips, fresh pouting from ardent pressure. Mary. If you presume to talk so, I will kill myself. Are you not ashamed? Bothwell. My blushes quite consume me: I feel my hair crackle on my head: my beard would burn my fingers. Mary. I will not laugh, sirrah! Bothwell. No, my most gracious lady! in mercy stop half-way! that smile is quite sufficient. Mary. Do you fancy I am capable of smiling? I am quite serious. You have carried me away, and now you have nothing to do but to take me back again. Bothwell. Alas! from my youth upward I have always been liable to these paroxysms. Mary. For shame! I do not understand a single word of what you are saying. Again I ask you, and I insist upon an answer, whither are you conducting me! Bothwell. To freedom, to safety, to the protection of a dutiful subject, to the burning heart of a gallant man. Mary. I am frightened out of my senses at the mere mention of any such things. What can you possibly mean? I never knew the like. I will not hear of it, you rebel! And you dare already.. Bothwell. Do you look so sternly on me, when you yourself have reduced me to this extremity? And now, worse! worse! do you deprive me of the last breath, by turning away from me those eyes, the bright unerring stars of my destiny? Mary. If they had any power (but they have none!) I would strike you almost dead with them Both cell. It would be dangerous: you have too for that audacity? Again? O madman! madman! Many enemies. Mary. Happiness, innocence, peace. No, they did not deny them. Bothwell! Bothwell! they vare mine; were they not? Botharell. And good things they are, no doubt; but there are other good things beside; all which you ssess, and these too. These should not always e shut up in the casket. Where there are peace and happiness, there is sure to be innocence; for viat else can anyone wish? but those who can bring them into the hearts of others, and will not, never will call innocent. I do not remember at any living person has entreated me and met With a refusal. Mary. Ah! such men may be beloved, but can hot love. What is that to me? It is unbecoming in me to reason with a profligate, or to listen any longer. You have often run then into such courses? madman ! Bothwell. To mistake the lips for the hand! hallucination! Mary. Now if you should (and you must!) be overtaken! Bothwell. You would deliver me up to death and ignominy? Mary. Our pure religion teaches us forgiveness. Then by my troth is it pure and bright Here is a stave of my own to its honour and glory. Bothwell. Yes; but I am no tenor. Mary (aside). Ah! sweet soul! thou* wert gentle, fond, and faithful! Bothwell (catching the last word). Capital for the faithful: and moreover it is the cleverest and rarest religion in the world. Few, even of the adventurously pious, so far interfere with the attributes of the Almighty as to take pardon into their own hands. . unless for offences against others. There indeed they find as little difficulty in practising as in preaching. Mary. I am quite edified at seeing you grow so serious. I once heard that you had abandoned the religion of your ancestors. Bothwell. I did not abandon it; it dropped off me unaware. Now to prove my constancy, I never would take another. It is hard that a man like me should be accused of irreligion. They may do anything with me they like, if they will only let me be quiet. I am long-suffering: I never preach again. Mary. Well; at least you have not fallen into heresy? you are not malignant? Bothwell. By Jupiter! no; neither the one nor the other. Sweet gracious lady! how could you suspect me? Mary. Because you men are so violent and so *Thinking of Rizzio. |