and operative advice, towards overcoming the difficulties with which it was anticipated the progress of the case through Parliament would be surrounded: for the Commissioners, instead of taking this opportunity to do away with their recorded effrontery, on the 28th of November preceding, sounded the tocsin, and strained every nerve to opposed the Petitioner's success—to defeat, to wit,
up from Kew, or from Windsor, often on horseback, and sometimes in heavy rain, to the Queen's House; he has gone in a sedan chair to St. James's, dressed himself, held a levee, passed through all the forms of that long and tedious ceremony; for such it was in the way that he performed it; without leaving any individual in the circle unnoticed; and has afterwards assisted at a Privy Council, or given audience to his Cabinet Ministers and others, till five, and even sometimes till six o'clock. After so much fatigue of body and mind, the only refreshment or sustenance that he usually took, consisted in a few slices of bread and butter and a dish of tea, which he sometimes swallowed as he walked up and down previous to getting into his carriage, in order to return to the country.
To this singular, though unquestionable account, may be attached as a rider—that in the spring of 1773, if the levee was on a Tuesday, the King gave audience to William Harrison, who either read, or laid before him for his inspection, sundry written or printed tracts, together with drafts of letters, &c., connected with the prosecution of the petition through Parliament: to the details of which his Majesty attended like on who had no other business on that day: for, it should be observed, that hurried manner which he is accused of when the bow was unstrung, could not be recognized in an affair like this, which called for a deliberate judgment and a cool aim.
