Note 113 — Chapter VII

He was the eldest son of Sir Henry Cavendish, Bart., of Doveridge Hall, Derbyshire, and afterwards had some lucrative offices in Ireland. His wife, the heiress of Mr. Bradshaw, was created Baroness in 1792. He died in 1804. It is to him that the public are indebted for the very interesting reports of the debates in Parliament, of which the first volume was published in 1841 by the late Mr. Wright,—an astonishing work for a man of his station, fortune, and pursuits, and incomparably the best—indeed the only faithful record of the proceedings in Parliament in the early part of this reign. It would have been far more valuable if he had taken the pains to give the words of the speakers in the passages of their speeches that were the most successful—his abridgment of course conveying a very imperfect and inadequate idea of any rhetorical excellence; hence, we rise from the perusal of his reports of Burke with some disappointment. Still, the work cannot be too carefully consulted by all who wish to gain an accurate insight into the history of the period which it embraces. One proof of Mr. (afterwards Sir Henry) Cavendish’s correctness is, that his reports of his own speeches go far to justify Walpole’s account of him.—E.