Note 28 — Chapter III

Mr. Rose's exertions in this respect were only ended by his death, which took place in January, 1818, at the age of seventy-four. His whole life, says a contemporary, was the continued and strenuous effort of a powerful mind to promote the welfare of the state and the happiness of his fellow creatures. In contrast to this testimony, which cannot be called exaggerated, we might refer to William Cobbett's bitter tirades against Mr. Rose, which, indeed, may with some readers form the most convincing evidence of the merits of the statesman. In Cobbett's New Year's Gift to Old George Rose, published in the Register of 1817, and to which choice production we shall again refer, there is an elaborate and embittered attack upon the latter, in the course of which Cobbett stated that the amount of the sinecures which Mr. Rose and his sons held would furnish ample funds for all the Savings Banks then in existence.