Note 180 — 156.
Reading edition
An allusion to Lord North's habit of sleeping in the House of Commons. He slumbered, as Gibbon says in his Autobiography, between the Attorney-General (Thurlow) and the Solicitor-General (Wedderburn), who roused him when it was necessary that he should speak. On one occasion a member of the Opposition exclaimed, in reproach of his somnolence, "Even now the noble lord is slumbering over the ruin of his country!" "I wish to Heaven," muttered Lord North, slowly opening his eyes, "that I was!"