PREFACE.
xv
When this Douglas who notwithstanding his chivalrous descent, had not a spark of magnanimity in his composition, took his seat at the Board, 9th February, 1765, at which the success of the Timekeeper was admitted by all, he accused the Claimant (who was not present nor prepared) of contumacy, in refusing to conform to the sentiments of a majority at the separate Commission, which majority it is distinctly shewn in, the history of the transactions, by a reference to the number, the names, and the letters of four out of eight who attended two meetings of this Commission, it was morally impossible he could have had.[1]—It is common enough to meet with those who question your understanding if you are not always of their opinion, but never was this attribute of ill-informed people more extravagantly exemplified than in the northern Aristocrat; who could not possibly conceive how any men with a grain of sense could dissent from the profundity of his resolves on this, or indeed on any other subject:[2] and reasoning rightly from
- ↑ Supposing otherwise, yet by not having summoned the Rev. John Michell, of Cambridge, to the second meeting, whose presence would probably have given him some trouble, he had vitiated and rendered null the whole proceeding.
- ↑ Barry, the painter, but for whom there was the excuse of partial insanity, was a chap of the same kidney: "with him, a difference of opinion, was an affront, a controversy was a quarrel, advice an insult, and competition a deadly and irre-
together excessive, and quite foreign to the whole intention of the framers of the Act under which this Commission sat.
