Page:Memoirs of a Trait in the Character of George III.djvu/26

Rh his strange interpretation of that Act.—From an interview between the Earl and the Candidate, we may conclude, his Lordship's plan, if followed up with spirit, would have called for forty or fifty pounds a week in wages to workmen; which when it is considered there was no provision for carrying this mode of explaining the Act into effect, became the height of ridicule: yet a Peer of Scotland, and, persisted in such an untenable argument: his absurd advice to John Harrison, at the time, was, to borrow all the money he could of his friends; naming Mr. Short, in particular; but he did not offer to back such counsel, by advancing him a fraction of a pound sterling.—The Commissioners of Longitude being presumed to have been all men of competent education, and more or less acquainted with what passes in our courts of equity and common law, how came it, that in a case on which the