Note 73 — 1779-1788.

In the protracted debates which occurred in 1788, on the Regency, Mr. Sheridan took occasion, when opposing the measure for reserving the patronage of the royal household, to attack the Minister—Mr. Pitt, and to wing from his bow another caustic shaft at the royal military artificers. Mr. Pitt, at some previous time, had charged a right honourable friend of Sheridan’s, on quitting office, “with having left a fortress behind him.” Sheridan admitted that the accusation was true; “but then,” continued he, in a vein of sparkling raillery, “like a coarse, clumsy workman, his right honourable friend had built his plan in open day, and retired with his friends, who served without pay. * * * Not so the right honourable gentleman over the way. Like a more crafty mason he had collected his materials with greater caution, and worked them up with abundantly more art. Perhaps he had taken the advice of the noble Duke—famous for fortification—and, with the aid of that able engineer, had provided a corps of royal military artificers, and thrown up impregnable ramparts to secure himself and his garrison. Upon this occasion the King’s arms doubtless might be seen flying as a banner on the top of his fortress, and powerful indeed must prove the effect of the right honourable gentleman’s thundering eloquence from without, and the support of the royal artificers from within, against his political adversaries.”—Sheridan’s Dramatic Works. See Life, p. 138. Bohn’s edit., 1848.

The last reference to the military artificers in Parliament was made by Mr. Courtenay on the 21st April, 1790, when, moving for a committee to inquire into the expenditure of the public money by the Duke of Richmond from the 1st January, 1784, he stated, among a variety of matter, that the corps of which his Grace was the founder, “were neither soldiers nor artificers.”—‘Gentleman’s Magazine,’ part 2, 1790, vol. 60, p. 720. This was followed, in 1794, by Mr. Glenie, who, in a second edition of his ‘Observations,’ declared that the corps was unquestionably a great imposition on the public. With this announcement the party crusade against the royal military artificers terminated.