expected?
France may be running mad without waiting for the moon; mad in broad day;
absolutely stripping off, not merely the royal livery, which she wore for
the last five hundred years with so much the look of a well-bred footman;
but tearing away the last coverture of the national nakedness. Well; in a
week or two of this process, she will have got rid not only of church and
king, but of laws, property, and personal freedom. But, I ask, what
business have we to interfere? If she is madder than the maddest of March
hares, she is only the less dangerous; she will probably dash out her
brains against the first wall that she cannot spring over."

"But, at least, we know that mischief is already done among ourselves.
Those French affairs are dividing our strength in the House," remarked
C----.

"What then?" quickly demanded Sheridan. "What is it to me if others have
the nightmare, while I feel my eyes open? Burke, in his dreams, may dread
the example of France; but I as little dread it as I should a fire at the
Pole. He thinks that Englishmen have such a passion for foreign
importations, that if the pestilence were raging on the other side of the
Channel, we should send for specimens. My proposition is, that the example
of France is more likely to make slaves of us than republicans."

"Is it," asked W----, "to make us

'Fly from minor tyrants to the throne?'"

"I laugh at the whole," replied Sheridan, "as a bugbear. I have no fear of
France as either a schoolmaster, or a seducer, of England. France is
lunatic, and who dreads a lunatic after his first paroxysm? Exhaustion,
disgust, decay, perhaps death, are the natural results. If there is any
peril to us, it is only from our meddling. The lunatic never revenges
himself but on his keeper. I should leave the patient to the native
doctors, or to those best of all doctors for mad nations, suffering,
shame, and time. Chain, taunt, or torment the lunatic, and he rewards you
by knocking out your brains."

"Those are not exactly the opinions of our friend Charles," observed the
prince with peculiar emphasis.

"No," was the reply. "I think for myself. Some would take the madman by
the hand, and treat him as if in possession of his senses. Burke would
gather all the dignitaries of Church and State, and treat him as a
demoniac; attempt to exorcise the evil spirit, and if it continued
intractable, solemnly excommunicate the possessed by bell, book, and
candle. But, as I do