ndian foliage, these acts had been committed, &c. &c. It
was a fertile theme for a poet; and how little soever Sheridan cared for
the Begums and their wrongs--and that he did care little appears from
what he afterwards said of Hastings himself--he could evidently make a
telling speech out of the theme, and he did so. Walpole says that he
turned everybody's head. 'One heard everybody in the street raving on
the wonders of that speech; for my part, I cannot believe it was so
supernatural as they say.' He affirms that there must be a witchery in
Mr. Sheridan, who had no diamonds--as Hastings had--to win favour with,
and says that the Opposition may be fairly charged with sorcery. Burke
declared the speech to be 'the most astonishing effort of eloquence,
argument, and wit united, of which there was any record or tradition.'
Fox affirmed that 'all he had ever heard, all he had ever read, when
compared with it, dwindled into nothing, and vanished like vapour before
the sun.' But these were partizans. Even Pitt acknowledged 'that it
surpassed all the eloquence of ancient and modern times, and possessed
everything that genius or art could furnish to agitate and control the
human mind.' One member confessed himself so unhinged by it, that he
moved an adjournment, because he could not, in his then state of mind,
give an unbiassed vote. But the highest testimony was that of Logan, the
defender of Hastings. At the end of the first hour of the speech, he
said to a friend, 'All this is declamatory assertion without proof.'
Another hour's speaking, and he muttered, 'This is a most wonderful
oration!' A third, and he confessed 'Mr. Hastings has acted very
unjustifiably.' At the end of the fourth, he exclaimed, 'Mr. Hastings is
a most atrocious criminal.' And before the speaker had sat down, he
vehemently protested that 'Of all monsters of iniquity, the most
enormous is Warren Hastings.'

Such in those days was the effect of eloquence; an art which has been
eschewed in the present House of Commons, and which our newspapers
affect to think is much out of place in an assembly met for calm
deliberation. Perhaps they are right; but oh! for the golden words of a
Sheridan, a Fox, even a Pitt and Burke.

It is said, though not proved, that on this same night of Sheridan's
glory in the House of Commons, his 'School for Scandal' was acted with
'rapturous applause' at Covent Garden, and his 'Duenna' no less
successfully at Drury Lane. What a pit