Chapter XXIV: Appendix: IX

WESTMINSTER ELECTION.—LETTER FROM THE RIGHT HON. RICHARD BRINSLEY
SHERIDAN TO ARTHUR MORRIS, ESQ., HIGH BAILIFF OF WESTMINSTER.

Saville Row, Sunday evening, July 10, 1814.

SIR,—Observing that you have called a meeting to-morrow, to be held in
Palace Yard, to consider of a fit person to fill up the present
vacancy in the representation of the City of Westminster, and having
myself received very earnest applications from numerous and
independent bodies of its inhabitant householders, requiring that I
should meet their wishes by proposing myself as a candidate, I take
the freedom of addressing these lines to you, to say that I absolutely
decline to be put in nomination in opposition to Lord Cochrane.

I send you this my determination without concert or communication with
the respectable persons to whom I have above referred, and towards
whom I must ever continue to give the utmost gratitude.

I trust that I need not declare that I should have felt greatly
honoured by having been again returned the representative of
Westminster; my title to aspire to that distinction is simply that
after more than thirty-one years’ service in Parliament, I can,
without fear of successful contradiction, assert that I never gave a
vote that was not in support of the truth of liberty, and in assertion
of the people’s rights, duly respecting at the same time the just
prerogatives of the Crown, and revering the sacred principles upon
which was founded and maintained the glory and the security of our
unrivalled Constitution.

Holding these opinions, as a public man, have I hitherto sat in the
House of Commons; and never will I accept a seat there but on the sole
condition of being the master of my own vote and voice—the servant
only of my conscience.

As to the present question, which occasions your meeting to-morrow, I
enter not into it. No man feels more the reverence due to the seats of
justice, or the confidence due to the verdicts of juries. But under
the circumstances of an expulsion from the House of Commons, I do not
hesitate to say, that I have a decided opinion that the expelled
member has a right to appeal to his constituents, with a view to the
restitution of his seat and the rescue of his character.

On these grounds, Sir, I will not allow myself to interfere with the
present appeal made on the part of Lord Cochrane, and to which I
conceive him to be so justly entitled.

In adopting this determination, I beg leave distinctly to state, that
I waive my claim to solicit the suffrages of the electors of
Westminster in favour of Lord Cochrane alone.

I have the honour to be, Sir, &c.
RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN.

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