A political associate of Burke’s for many years was Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816).  Of Co.  Cavan descent, Sheridan was born in Dublin, and was educated partly in his native city and partly at Harrow, and the remainder of his life was spent in England.  He was distinguished first as a playwright and afterwards as a parliamentary orator.  In 1775 his comedy, The Rivals, was produced at Covent Garden Theatre; his farce, St. Patrick’s Day, or the Scheming Lieutenant, and his comic opera, The Duenna, were staged in the same year.  His greatest comedy, The School for Scandal, was acted at Drury Lane Theatre in 1777, and it was followed in 1779 by The Critic.  His last dramatic composition was the tragedy, Pizarro, produced in 1799.  Elected to parliament in 1780, Sheridan was made under-secretary for foreign affairs in the Rockingham administration of 1782, and in 1783 he was secretary to the treasury in the Coalition Ministry.  He sprang into repute as a brilliant orator during the impeachment of Warren Hastings, 1787-1794.  His speech on the Begums of Oude was one of the greatest ever delivered within the walls of the British parliament.  In 1806, on the return of the Whigs to power, he was appointed treasurer in the navy.  In 1812 his long parliamentary career came to a close when he was defeated for the borough of Westminster.  He died in 1816, and was honored with a magnificent funeral in Westminster Abbey.

To give an idea as to how Sheridan’s oratorical powers impressed his contemporaries, it is perhaps enough to repeat what Burke said of his second speech against Warren Hastings, namely, that it was “the most astonishing effort of eloquence, argument, and wit united of which there is any record or tradition”, and to add that when, after three hours of impassioned pleading, he brought his first speech against Hastings to an end, the effect produced was so great that it was agreed to adjourn the house immediately and defer the final decision until the members should be in a less excited mood.  As a dramatist Sheridan is second in popularity to Shakespeare alone. The School for Scandal and The Rivals are as fresh and as eagerly welcomed today as they were a hundred and forty years ago.  Like Burke, he was true to the land of his birth and his oppressed Catholic fellow-countrymen.  Almost his last words in the house of commons were these:  “Be just to Ireland.  I will never give my vote to any administration that opposes the question of Catholic emancipation.”

Sheridan belonged to a family that was exceptionally distinguished in English literature.  Among those who preceded him as litterateurs were his grandfather, the Rev. Thomas Sheridan, D.D.; his father, Thomas Sheridan; and his mother, Frances Sheridan.  Rev. Dr. Sheridan (1684-1738), the friend and confidant of Dean Swift, kept a fashionable school in Dublin, edited the Satires of Persius in 1728, wrote