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Memoirs of the life of ... Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1826)
Memoirs of the life of Richard Brinsley Sheridan - 1826 Author:Thomas Moore Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAR XIV. FRENCH REVOLUTION. MR.BURKE. HIS BREACH WITH MB. SHERIDAN. DISSOLUTION OF PARLIAMENT. MR. BURKE AND MR. FOX. RUSSIAN ARMAMENT. ROYAL SCOTCH B... more »OROUGHS. We have now to consider the conduct and ' A'L V opinions of Mr. Sheridan, during the measures and discussions consequent upon the French Revolution, an event, by which the minds of men throughout all Europe were .thrown into a state of such feverish excitement, that a more than usual degree of tolerance should be exercised towards the errors and extremes, into which all parties were hurried during the paroxysm. There was, indeed, no rank or class of society, whose interests and passions were not deeply involved in the question. The powerful and the rich, both of State and Church, must naturally have regarded with dismay the advance of a political heresy, whose path they saw strewed over with the broken talismans of rank and authority. Many, too, with a disinterested reverence for ancient institutions, trembled to see them thus approached by rash hands, whoseChap. talents for ruin were sufficiently certain, but whose powers of reconstruction were yet to be ' tried. On the other hand, the easy triumph of a people over their oppressors was an example which could not fail to excite the hopes of the many as actively as the fears of the few. The great problem of the natural rights of mankind seemed about to be solved in a manner most flattering to the majority;the zeal of the lover of liberty was kindled into enthusiasm, by a conquest achieved for his cause upon an arena so vast; and many, who before would have smiled at the doctrine of human perfectibility, now imagined they saw, in what the Revolution performed and promised, almost enough to sanction the indulgence of that splendid dream. It was na...« less