[211] Dingley was a strange eccentric creature, always bent on some wild scheme or other. He had obtained a patent for a newly-invented sawing machine, which he carried on at Limehouse; and various other projects of his are mentioned in the Annual Register. Junius states that he died of a broken heart in consequence of having been so contemptuously treated at this election. He was a man of some property, and had been Lord Chatham’s landlord when the latter resided at Hampstead. An amusing account of him is given in a note to Chatham’s Correspondence, vol. iii. p. 350.—E.
[212] This debate is reported in Cavendish, vol. i. p. 345–355.—E.
[213] Yet it had been mentioned that very morning in the newspapers as intended.
[214] Evelyn Pierpoint, the last Duke of Kingston, K.G. He was then just married to the famous Miss Chudleigh—a marriage afterwards disallowed by the House of Lords. [The Duke was the only son of Lord Newark, only son of the second Duke of Kingston. His father died at the early age of twenty-one, and he had the misfortune to be brought up by his grandfather, a haughty, selfish, licentious man, who appears to have been equally a tyrant in his family and out of it. Thus he became bashful and dull, and displayed few if any of the talents which had characterized his race, and were so evident in his aunts, Lady Mary Wortley Montague and Lady Mar. He raised a regiment in 1745, which is often mentioned in the history of that campaign as Kingston’s light horse, and, what was not then common with Peers, he served with it. He died at Bath in September 1773. His widow survived him till 1788, when she died at Paris, aged sixty-eight.—E.]
[215] Lord Irnham, on a family quarrel, afterwards challenged his son to fight.
[216] The date of the first letter published by Junius is the 21st of January.—E.
[217] Mr. Grenville spoke twice in this debate. Early on Saturday he was called up by an observation of Mr. Onslow that Alderman Beckford was not at liberty to reason against a resolution of the House of Commons. “Sir,” said he, in a tone exceedingly animated, “he who will contend that a resolution of the House of Commons is the law of the land, is a violent enemy of his country, be he who or what he will. The law of the land, an Act of Parliament, is to be the guide of every man in the kingdom. No power—not an order of the House of Commons can set that aside, can change, diminish, or augment it. I do say, and I will maintain that ground—let any gentleman call me to order—that the law of the land, an Act of Parliament, cannot be altered, enforced, or augmented by a vote of either House of Parliament. That I say is the law of this country.” Immediately after this speech Mr. Grenville spat blood.—(Cavendish, vol. i. p. 370.)
At a later period of the evening Mr. Grenville entered fully into the questions of the House, and discussed with great ability the celebrated cases of Ashby v. White, and Rex v. Lord Banbury, where in the former instance the decision of the House of Commons, and in the latter of the House of Lords, had not been recognised by the courts of law.—E.
[218] The debate in reported in Cavendish, vol. i. p. 360–86.—E.
[219] Lord North is stated by Cavendish to have withheld his consent to the course recommended by Conway, on the ground that it would not be justifiable to convey to the Americans the idea of a repeal of the Act so long as there was a possibility of their being disappointed. The best speeches on this debate were those of Edmund Burke and his cousin William, both being clever and animated. (Cavendish, vol. i. p. 390–401.)—E.