"Neither shall this act accelerate or anticipate the times of payment of rents, annuities, or other monies, which shall become payable in consequence of any custom, usage, lease, deed, writing, or other contract or agreement, now subsisting, or which shall be entered into before the said fourteenth of September, or which shall become payable by virtue of any act of Parliament. Not to accelerate the payment, or increase the interest of any money which shall become payable as aforesaid, or at the time of the delivery of any goods or other things whatsoever, or the commencement, or determination of any leases or demises of lands, &c., or other contracts or agreements, annuity, or rent, or of any grant for a term of years, &c., or the time of attaining the age of twenty-one years, or any other age requisite by law, usage, or writing, for the doing any act, or for any other purpose, by any persons now born, or who shall be born before the said fourteenth of September; or the time of the determination of any apprenticeship or other service by indenture, or by articles under seal, or by reason of any simple contract or hiring; but all these shall commence, cease, and determine, at and upon the said natural days and times on which they would have happened if this act had not been made."
II.
Lord Chesterfield's own Account.
Source.—Letters of the Earl of Chesterfield. Edited by Lord Mahon, 1845-53. Vol. ii., pp. 115, 116.
London,
March 18, O.S. 1751.
My dear Friend,
I acquainted you in a former letter that I had brought in a bill into the House of Lords, for correcting and reforming our present calendar, which is the Julian, and for adopting the Gregorian. I will now give you a more particular account of that affair, from which reflections will naturally occur to you that I hope may be useful, and which I fear you have not made. It was notorious, that the Julian calendar was erroneous, and had overcharged the solar year with eleven days. Pope Gregory XIII. corrected this error [in 1582]; his reformed calendar was immediately received by all the Catholic Powers of Europe, and afterwards adopted by all the Protestant ones, except Russia [which still (1912) adheres to the old style.—Ed.], Sweden and England. It was not, in my opinion, very honourable for England to remain in a gross and avowed error, especially in such company; the inconvenience of it was likewise felt by all those who had foreign correspondences whether political or mercantile. I determined, therefore, to attempt the reformation; I consulted the best lawyers, and the most skilful astronomers, and we cooked up a bill for that purpose. But then my difficulty began; I was to bring in this bill, which was necessarily composed of law jargon and astronomical calculations, to both of which I am an utter stranger. However, it was absolutely necessary to make the House of Lords think that I knew something of the matter, and also to make them believe that they knew something of it themselves, which they do not. For my own part, I could just as soon have talked Celtic or Sclavonian to them as astronomy, and they would have understood me full as well; so I resolved to do better than speak to the purpose, and to please instead of informing them. I gave them, therefore, only an historical account of calendars, from the Egyptian down to the Gregorian, amusing them now and then with little episodes; but I was particularly attentive to the choice of my words, to the harmony and roundness of my periods, to my eloquence, to my action. This succeeded, and ever will succeed; they thought I informed, because I pleased them; and many of them said, that I had made the whole very clear to them, when, God knows, I had not even attempted it. Lord Macclesfield, who had the greatest share in forming the bill and who is one of the greatest mathematicians and astronomers in Europe, spoke afterwards with infinite knowledge, and all the clearness that so intricate a matter would admit of; but as his words, his periods and his utterance were not near so good as mine, the preference was most unanimously, though most unjustly, given to me....
SMOLLETT'S CHARACTER OF THE DUKE OF NEWCASTLE.[22]
Source.—T. Smollett: Humphrey Clinker, 1831. Pp. 110, 124, 126.
His eulogium was interrupted by the arrival of the old duke of N——, who, squeezing into the circle, with a busy face of importance, thrust his head into every countenance, as if he had been in search of somebody, to whom he wanted to impart something of great consequence. My uncle, who had been formerly known to him, bowed as he passed: and the duke, seeing himself saluted so respectfully by a well-dressed person, was not slow in returning the courtesy. He even came up, and, taking him cordially by the hand,—"My dear friend, Mr. A——," said he, "I am rejoiced to see you. How long have you come from abroad? How did you leave our good friends the Dutch? The king of Prussia don't think of another war, ah? He's a great king, a great conqueror—a very great conqueror! Your Alexanders and Hannibals were nothing at all to him, Sir! corporals, drummers! dross! mere trash—damn'd trash, heh?" His grace, being by this time out of breath, my uncle took the opportunity to tell him he had not been out of England, that his name was Bramble, and that he had the honour to sit in the last parliament but one of the late king, as representative for the borough of Dymkymraig. "Odso!" cried the duke, "I remember you perfectly well, my dear Mr. Bramble. You was always a good and loyal subject—a staunch friend to administration. I made your brother an Irish bishop." "Pardon me, my lord," said the squire, "I once had a brother, but he was a captain in the army."—"Ha!" said his grace, "he was so—he was indeed! But who was the bishop then? Bishop Blackberry—sure it was bishop Blackberry. Perhaps some relation of yours?"—"Very likely, my lord!" replied my uncle; "the blackberry is the fruit of the bramble: but I believe the bishop is not a berry of our bush."—"No more he is, no more he is, ha, ha, ha!" exclaimed the duke; "there you give me a scratch, good Mr. Bramble, ha, ha, ha! Well, I shall be glad to see you at Lincoln's Inn Fields. You know the way; times are altered. Though I have lost the power, I retain the inclination; your very humble servant, good Mr. Blackberry." So saying, he shoved to another corner of the room. "What a fine old gentleman!" cried Mr. Barton, "what spirits! what a memory! he never forgets an old friend."—"He does me too much honour to rank me among the number. Whilst I sat in parliament I never voted with the ministry but three times, when my conscience told me they were in the right: however, if he still keeps levee, I will carry my nephew thither, that he may see, and learn to avoid the scene; for I think an English gentleman never appears to such disadvantage as at the levee of a minister. Of his grace I shall say nothing at present, but that for thirty years he was the constant and common butt of ridicule and execration. He was generally laughed at as an ape in politics, whose office and influence served only to render his folly the more notorious; and the opposition cursed him as the indefatigable drudge of a first mover, who was justly styled and stigmatized as the father of corruption: but this ridiculous ape, this venal drudge, no sooner lost the places he was so ill qualified to fill, and unfurled the banners of faction, than he was metamorphosed into a pattern of public virtue; the very people, who reviled him before, now extolled him to the skies, as a wise experienced statesman, chief pillar of the protestant succession, and corner-stone of English liberty...."