Note 73 — Chapter III

It is impossible not to call the attention of the reader to the conduct of that profligate man, Wedderburne. Sprung from a Jacobite family (his uncle having been executed for the last rebellion), he had set out a courtly advocate, but being laid aside on the change of times, he had plunged into all the intemperance of opposition, and now appeared a warm partisan of liberty, and an accuser of his own immediate patrons. His mischievous abilities soon forced him again into employment, which as naturally led him back to his old monarchic principles, to support which, he, so lately a champion of the constitution, was made Attorney-General, and at length Chief Justice of the Common Pleas.

George Grenville was the very counterpart of Wedderburne. He was not only educated a Whig, but had leaned to republicanism. Becoming Prime Minister, no man had shown himself more despotic. When overturned by his own violence, he reverted to opposition; but having consummate pride and obstinacy, and none of the flexibility of Wedderburne, but so far more honesty, he wavered between faction and haughtiness, baffled his own purposes by half measures, and could no more accommodate his inflexible temper to the necessary means of regaining his power, than he had been able to bend it to those that were requisite for maintaining it.