Page:Memoirs of a Trait in the Character of George III.djvu/250

NO. 2. every possible scruple, to trust our title to the reward, to the success of a second voyage, which I accordingly made to Barbadoes, in the year 1764, under the appointment of the Commissioners; but, seeing the cavils which were raised against the former voyage, I requested that a paragraph might be added to my instructions, to the effect, that those instructions being fulfilled, we were without further difficulty to receive our reward. Lord Sandwich, who presided at that Board, replied, that it would be mere tautology, for the very giving of the instructions purported the same thing.—The performance of the Watch was such, that the Commissioners were forced to certify that it had kept the Longitude within a third part of the nearest limits required by the Act of Queen Anne, viz: within ten miles: but instead of issuing the reward, which they were then by law compellable to do, they applied to Parliament, and obtained an Act taking away our right acquired by forty years labour under the old law, acquiesced in during that time by numberless acts of their own Board, and subjecting us to new conditions, undefined and discretionary. We were at that