afterwards well nigh overset, by the Commissioners insisting on such astronomical observations being previously made, as were next to impracticable in
if they desire to be on good terms with posterity, the common wish of mankind. This Nobleman, insignificant as he was, if measured by his understanding, though the Royal Society were ostensibly of a different opinion, might have slept undisturbed with his chivalrous forefathers, had it not been incumbent on the Author, in tracing those transactions which finally resulted in the interference of George III. to drag his mental remains into the noontide glare. If their exhumation is offensive, his own neglect and want of principle, or of humanity, or of both, is the reply. Neither this Douglas, nor his supporters, most of whom were of the sacred profession, ever thought of the wholesome counsel they might have derived from a phrase of comprehensive meaning in the Canonical Book, entitled emphatically, the Preacher, which the Adventures of John Harrison remarkably illustrate. Had our knowledge of the proceedings of the Commissioners of Longitude depended on their official minutes, it might never have transpired that they delegated their authority in fact, though not in form, to their Colleague; who told them of the contumacy of the Candidate under the separate Commission; his own total want of common sense in that affair being out of the question. Neither could it have become like "truth to the touch" that the real source of the Act to amend, explain and alter the 12th of Queen Anne was not in the trumpery pretences adduced for the same, but because the enchafed northern blood of the Thane could not brook his defeat two years before. All this might have passed off plausibly enough, had not the parties implicated set no store by the pithy suggestion "a bird in the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter."[subnote 1]
- ↑ Ecclesiastes, Chapter x. verse 20.
