a speech, out of an old sermon book, with very bad sight, leaning on the table; Lord Mansfield sitting at it, with eyes of fixed melancholy, looking at him, knowing that the Bishop's were the only eyes in the House who could not meet his; the judges behind him full of rage at being drawn into so absurd an opinion, and abandoned in it by their chief; the Bishops waking, as your Lordship knows they do, just before they vote, and staring on finding something the matter; while Lord Townshend was close to the bar, getting Mr. Dunning to put up his glass to look at the head of criminal justice. He has not reappeared since in the House of Lords, and all Westminster Hall behold his dejection without, I believe, one commiserating eye."[1]
During the two following months it was the duty of Shelburne to keep Chatham informed of the further progress of events.
Lord Shelburne to Lord Chatham.
March 15th, 1774.
"You will read Lord North's proposition in the newspapers, to change the port from Boston, till the assembly has indemnified the India Company, and to enable the king afterwards, if he judges proper, then to restore it. Colonel Barré tells me that, finding the Rockinghams divided, that is, Mr. Dowdeswell, after some hesitation, directly opposing, and Lord John Cavendish rather tending to approbation and decidedly declining a division, thought the best service he could do to America was to support government to a certain degree, avowing his original principles, and that he might have more weight to resist propositions of a more coercive nature, which might be offered in the prosecution of this
- ↑ Shelburne to Chatham, February 27th, 1774. The debate above alluded to related to the question of literary property. One Becket had obtained a decree against some other bookseller for pirating a work belonging to him. It was maintained by the defendants that the statute of Queen Anne took away any right which an author might previously have had at common law of multiplying copies exclusively for ever. Lord Camden supported this view, in which the House of Lords concurred. Lord Mansfield had supported the decree, but now seemed to shrink from his own opinion.
