Page:Memoirs of a Trait in the Character of George III.djvu/61

Rh the tangible logic of pecuniary advances, had always led the Claimant to construe the 12th of Queen Anne consonant to what afterwards appeared to be the opinion of the Crown Lawyers.—The pretence of attaching no importance to the repeated refusals of the loan of the Timekeeper, by excluding them from their minutes, could influence no one outside of the apartment where this oppression, so remarkably disgraceful towards a man of his years, was sanctioned, and least of all George 3rd, who understood the subject, and whose resentment might have been anticipated, had he been present at their conferences with closed doors. Although not acquainted with the origin of Lord Morton's indefensible conduct, the King could not respect a majority at the Commission of Longitude, which had so long been implicitly ruled by so overbearing a character; by whom in fact, though not in form, all the powers of these public functionaries were exercised. The spirit of his oppressive resolves seemed, after his demise, to have been fully transmitted to the predominent party at the Board, or how could they with any regard to decency, require that the Timekeeper, last completed, should be tried by Dr. Maskelyne, and no one else?

Among the printed tracts which this remarkable affair gave occasion for, on the part of the Claimant, was one published two or three years before the date of the letter to Dr. Demainbury, and in the argument the following passage occurs.

This was