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 THE DEMEANOUR OF ENGLAND. 317 of the French Convention, it also comprised a chap. good number of wise, sober, painstaking men ; ' and, if the chairman was indeed an accuser, pre- disposed to fix blame upon the servants of the State, there were other members determined to make the tribunal work justly in a patient search after truth. Amongst the foremost of these, there were Lord Seymour (now the Duke of Somerset), cold, able, painstaking, and the better prepared for this scrutiny, because himself highly gifted with the faculties of a public administrator ; General Peel, always trustworthy for his fairness, for his sterling good sense, and having withal a sagacity not suffered to rust because kept in use on the turf ; Mr Ellice, a man not unpractised in the business of an army department, and endowed with a natural shrewd- ness which he had whetted to extreme keenness by mastering the game of Party ; Mr Drum- mond, a man often soaring into mystic, spiritual realms, and scarce ever indeed such a worldling as to be able to finish a speech without — towards its end — disclosing a part of some wonderful creed, yet gifted with a piercing cleverness, with a keen, lively wit, and a nature devoid of fear. The Committee had not sat many days, when Rejection of Mr Eoebuck, its chairman, came down to the to mak.! the xr J /• • • ii ji, 1 Committee a Mouse, ana (imagining, apparently, that he was 'secret 'one upon the track of dire plots and treasons, ranging up to the very side of the throne,)(^^) asked that the Committee should be ' secret,' and ordered to sit with closed doors ; but Lord Seymour springing up, opposed the motion as ' foolish,*