from pleasure to business is both shorter and easier than from a state of total inaction.
He has a kind of unhappiness in his temper, which, if it be not conquered before it has taken too deep a root, will be a source of frequent anxiety. Whenever he is displeased, his anger does not break out with heat and violence ; but he becomes sullen and silent, and retires to his closet ; not to compose his mind by study or contemplation, but merely to indulge the melancholy enjoyment of his own ill humor. Even when the fit is ended, unfavorable symptoms very frequently return, which indicate that on certain occasions his Royal Highness has too correct a memory.
Though I have mentioned his good and bad qualities, without flattery, and without aggravation, allowances should still be made, on account of his youth, and his bad education : for though the Bishop of Peterborough, now Bishop of Salisbury, the preceptor ; Mr. Stone, the sub-governor ; and Mr. Scott, the sub-preceptor, were men of sense, men of learning, and worthy, good men, they had but little weight and influence. The mother and the nursery always prevailed.
During the course of the last year, there has, indeed, been some alteration ; the authority of the nursery has gradually declined, and the Earl of Bute, by the assistance of the mother, has now the intire confidence. But whether this change will be greatly to his Royal Highness's advantage, is a nice question, which cannot hitherto be determined with any certainty.
James [2d] Earl Waldegrave, Memoirs from 1754 to 1758 (edited by H. R. V. Fox, London, 1821), 8-10.
131. Argument on Writs of Assistance (1761)
BY JAMES OTIS
Otis was a Boston lawyer whose powers of debate and fervid oratory made him the most prominent of the Americans in the first phase of the Revolution. This argument was a public assertion of the right of the colonists to be free from a means of executing the acts of trade. — Bibliography : Tyler, Literary History of the Revolution, I, 36-52; William Tudor, Life of Otis ; Winsor, Narrative and Critical History, VI, 68-70; Channing and Hart, Guide, 134. — On the acts of trade, see Contemporaries, I, No. 54, and above, Nos. 45, 55, 87.
