Page:Memoirs of a Trait in the Character of George III.djvu/20

Rh dogs, and equity to the devil, in this way; the conjecture will be, that there must have been some stirring spirit in the depths of so foul a vortex, towards whom his colleagues might be regarded as men of straw, and such was the fact. James, Earl of Morton,, a vain, bustling and obtrusive character, took the management of every thing to himself, with, or without leave, does not appear. He was sufficiently imbued with the sentiment couched under his country's motto, and the Claimant had the misfortune to affront hime, about two years before, by not complying with certain impossibilities he prescribed under a separate Commission, to which he had been nominated by an Act, the 2nd George 3rd, which had been procured to prevent the Invention from being lost by the casualties of the sea, &c.

Of this Nobleman, who seems to have coveted fame at all events, like the shepherd who set fire to the temple of Diana, nothing is now known but that he was a few seasons President of the Royal Society; which becomes an uncompromising libel on the discernment of those by whom (we suspect