of this, my Son went the voyage to Barbadoes, in which the Watch kept its time "considerably within the nearest limits of the Act of Queen Anne," as certified, even by the Commissioners themselves.
On the success of this trial being known, and after having employed near forty years of my life on the faith of an Act of Parliament, was a doctrine broached to me (as I solemnly declare for the first time)[1] that the Commissioners were invested with
- ↑ Neither would it have been broached at that time, nor at any subsequent period, had not the Earl of Morton taken his seat among them. The unpardonable misconduct of the Commissioners in giving credence, without the least examination or enquiry, to the gross misstatements of that Nobleman, in a case on which £17,500 depended, was commented on in its place; and seldom has Lord Chesterfield's favourite position, of the discrepancy between the real and the ostensible motives of public men, been better illustrated than by the deformity of his whole transaction; for the pretended doubts and difficulties, which were acted on even in opposition to the opinion of the law authorities, all resolve themselves into an affront given to the proud Thane two years before, and that too by not complying with impossibilities!
favourable towards the Candidate, he became, from that time, his decided enemy. George 3rd coalesced with this Nobleman for political purposes, but without entertaining a personal esteem for him. When his unhappy malady had removed all disguise, his attendants related that he would talk to himself about Lord Sandwich, under the appellation of Jemmy Twitcher. This was a nickname he had got by having affixed it to a political pamphlet, of which he was unluckily discovered to be the author: and therefore could not complain when his enemies used it in derision.
