Volume 2 — SHERIDAN’S LAST UTTERANCES IN THE HOUSE (1812). Source.—Moore’s Life of Sheridan, 1825. P. 677.

My objection to the present Ministry is, that they are avowedly arrayed and embodied against a principle,—that of concession to the Catholics of Ireland,—which I think, and must always think, essential to the safety of this empire. I will never give my vote to any administration that opposes the question of Catholic Emancipation. I will not consent to receive a furlough upon that particular question, even though a Ministry were carrying every other that I wished. In fine, I think the situation of Ireland a paramount consideration. If they were to be the last words I should ever utter in this House, I should say, “Be just to Ireland, as you value your own honour;—be just to Ireland, as you value your own peace.”

His very last words in Parliament, on his own motion relative to the Overtures of Peace from France, were as follows:

“Yet, after the general subjugation and ruin of Europe, should there ever exist an independent historian to record the awful events that produced this universal calamity, let that historian have to say,—‘Great Britain fell, and with her fell all the best securities for the charities of human life, for the power and honour, the fame, the glory, and the liberties, not only of herself, but of the whole civilized world.’ ”