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in France) has indulged (the opportunity being so handsome) that fearless laudatory spirit, distinguished as such from the echo of official panegyric; because the merit it informs us of is enhanced, instead of evaporating, by any attempt to dwell on particulars, and explain in detail. It would have rendered null and void the obligation of resorting to precedent in those addresses which neither the above Society, nor any other, patronized by George 3rd would probably have withheld, had some new privilege been conferred on its corporation. The difference scarcely needs to be pointed out, between these eulogies for what may be effected by a stroke of the pen,[1] and those which, as in the present in-
- ↑ Of this description was the celebrated affair of the Miller at the court of Frederic III.; and as that transaction, the knowledge of which was soon circulated over Europe, may not be familiar to many readers of the present time, in this country, such are informed, that—a Judge, having decided that the Miller was bound to pay his rent, after his Landlord had diverted the course of the stream that turned the mill, and consequently rendered it useless, was ordered to be punished for a decision so contrary to equity.[subnote 1] The case of this Miller and that of our Mechanician, were much the same in principle though different in detail: for after the opinion of the Commissioners had flowed in the same channel with his so long a period, after they had drawn from him the labour of all the prime of his life, they had no more right to dictate further trials,
- ↑ As it was not said the Judge was bribed, the affair may be conjectured to have turned on some technical chicanery that attached to the Miller's agreement not having provided against a circumstance so unlooked for. In England it would have been held irreconcilable to the Common Law.
