petition from any person who might think himself aggrieved by
this bill should ever be received. It was necessary to consider
how the commissioners should be remunerated for their services;
and this question was decided with impudent injustice. It was
determined that the commissioners who had signed the report
should receive a thousand pounds each. But a large party thought
that the dissentient three deserved no recompense; and two of
them were merely allowed what was thought sufficient to cover the
expense of their journey to Ireland. This was nothing less than
to give notice to every man who should ever be employed in any
similar inquiry that, if he wished to be paid, he must report
what would please the assembly which held the purse of the state.
In truth the House was despotic, and was fast contracting the
vices of a despot. It was proud of its antipathy to courtiers;
and it was calling into existence a new set of courtiers who
would study all its humours, who would flatter all its
weaknesses, who would prophesy to it smooth things, and who would
assuredly be, in no respect, less greedy, less faithless, or less
abject than the sycophants who bow in the antechambers of kings.

Indeed the dissentient commissioners had worse evils to apprehend
than that of being left unremunerated. One of them, Sir Richard
Levinz, had mentioned in private to his friends some
disrespectful expressions which had been used by one of his
colleagues about the King. What he had mentioned in private was,
not perhaps very discreetly, repeated by Montague in the House.
The predominant party eagerly seized the opportunity of worrying
both Montague and Levinz. A resolution implying a severe censure
on Montague was carried. Levinz was brought to the bar and
examined. The four were also in attendance. They protested that