Page:Memoirs of a Trait in the Character of George III.djvu/60

Rh read, or otherwise submit it to him: a letter accordingly, adapted to explain the unmerited and insurmountable difficulties—the dilemma into which the Applicant had got by relying on the famous act of Parliament, so often quoted, was transmitted to the Doctor; the immediate consequence of which was that the King sent for the junior Harrison to Windsor, and interrogated him closely on this recapitulated case of his Father. They seem to have risked injuring their plea, by the strong language applied to the conduct of the Commissioners of Longitude; but the treatment they complained of, did not require much precaution to expose. The party business into which the proceedings of their Boards had wholly deviated from the time when it was probable that the candidate would achieve the discovery sought, was commented on in the Preface, as likewise, the disgracefully oppressive conduct of the Nobleman who figures in these MEMOIRS as if he had not a drop of "the milk of human kindness" in his composition, nor yet the commonest sense of equity; for many a pothouse oracle would have allowed some consideration to the fact that the Commissioners themselves (as we are justified in repeating it) had invariably interpreted, and by