_David Hartly, Esq._ David Hartley the younger (1732-1813), son of the
philosopher; M.P. for Kingston-upon-Hull; published _Letters on the
American War_, 1777-79, which critically reviewed the history of British
colonial policy; friend and correspondent of Franklin (whose letters
he sometimes read in the House of Commons); British plenipotentiary at
Paris to negotiate peace with America, 1783. He was the Cassandra of the
House and a tireless advocate of peace, but his long-windedness made
him disliked. In _The Abbey of Kilkhampton_, 1780, Sir Herbert Croft’s
satirical garland of epitaphs, Hartley’s epitaph reads as follows (Part
II, p. 124):
Here rests,
If we may trust the Silence of his Grave,
D.... H....y, Esq.
His abilities were the Subject of Admiration, and the
public Utility was the generous Object they had
in view,
But⸺he was _troublesome_.
_Mr. Bamber Gascoyne._ Bamber Gascoyne (1725-1791), M.P. for Truro and
a Lord of Trade and Plantations. Of this footnote and the speech by
Hartley, _The London Magazine_ observed:
The description of a certain fat member heading the dinner
troop and drawing them out of the house, upon a dry,
metaphysical, long winded speaker getting up, is truly
characteristic; and strangers frequenting the gallery may
congratulate themselves on this happy stroke, for it has partly
silenced the tedious declaimer, who never considered that if
each speaker claimed the same right, to pay no regard to time,
a whole session might be passed in adjourned debates from
_three_ in the afternoon to _three_ in the morning, day after
day (XLVII, 566).
_Sir John Irwin._ Sir John Irwin (1728-1788), K.B.; M.P. for East
Grinstead; Major-General and Commander-in-Chief in Ireland; famous for
his sartorial elegance and convivial habits.
_Mr. Selwyn._ George Augustus Selwyn (1719-1791), M.P. for Gloucester;
the celebrated wit and club-man. Though he sat in Parliament for about
thirty years, Selwyn was notoriously apathetic towards politics. But
since he returned two members besides himself, and always woke up in time
to give his vote for the ministers when a division was called, Selwyn was
amply rewarded by successive administrations. He was, wrote Sir George
Otto Trevelyan,
at one and the same time surveyor-general of crown lands—which
he never surveyed—registrar in chancery at Barbadoes—which he
never visited—and surveyor of the meltings and clerk of the
irons in the mint—where he showed himself once a week in order
to eat a dinner which he ordered, but for which the nation paid
(_The Early History of Charles James Fox_, New York, 1881, pp.
94-95).
_his Honour Mr. Brudenell._ James Brudenell (1725-1811), second son of
the third Earl of Cardigan; M.P. for Marlborough; cr. Baron Brudenell of
Deene, 1780; succeeded his brother as fifth Earl of Cardigan, 1790.