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FOR SHARPE AND HAILES, PICCADILLY; TAYLOR And hessey,
FLEET-STREET; CRADOCK AND JOY, PATERNOSTER-ROW;
AND J. M. RICHARDSON, CORNHILL.

1811.

61C 4124

824.52

1

TO TH

RIGHT HONOURABLE JOHN LORD SOMERS,

BARON OF EVESHAM *.

MY LORD,

I SHOULD not act the part of an impartial Spectator, if I dedicated the following papers to one who is not of the most consummate and most acknowledged merit.

None but a person of a finished character can be a proper patron of a work which endeavours to cultivate and polish human life, by promoting virtue and knowledge, and by recommending whatsoever may be either useful or ornamental to society,

I know that the homage I now pay you, is offering a kind of violence to one who is as solicitous to shun applause, as he is assiduous to deserve it. But, my lord, this is perhaps the only particular in which your prudence will be always disappointed.

While justice, candour, equanimity, a zeal for the good of your country, and the most persuasive eloquence in bringing over others to it, are valuable distinctions; you are not to expect that the public will so far comply with your inclinations, as to forbear celebrating such extraordinary qualities. It is in vain that you have endeavoured to conceal your share of merit in the many national

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services which you have effected. Do what you will, the present age will be talking of your virtues, though posterity alone will do them justice.

Other men pass through oppositions and contending interests in the ways of ambition; but your great abilities have been invited to power, and importuned to accept of advancement. Nor is it strange that this should happen to your lordship, who could bring into the service of your sovereign the arts and policies of ancient Greece and Rome; as well as the most exact knowledge of our own constitution in particular, and of the interests of Europe in general; to which I must also add, a certain dignity in yourself, that (to say the least of it) has been always equal to those great honours which have been conferred upon you.

It is very well known how much the church owed to you, in the most dangerous day it ever saw, that of the arraignment of its prelates +; and how far the civil power, in the late and present reign, has been indebted to your counsels and wisdom.

But to enumerate the great advantages which the public has received from your administration,

lord high chancellor of England. In the beginning of 1700 he was removed from his post of lord chancellor; and the year after was impeached of high crimes and misdemeanors by the house of commons, of which he was acquitted upon trial by the house of lords. He then retired to a studious course of life, and was chosen president of the Royal Society. In 1706 he proposed a bill for the regulation of the law; and the same year was one of the principal managers for the union between England and Scotland. In 1708 he was made lord president of the council, from which post he was removed in 1710, upon the change of the ministry. In the latter end of Queen Anne's reign, bis lordship grew very infirm in his health; which indisposition is sup posed to have been the reason that he held no other post than a seat at the council table after the accession of King George T. He died of an apoplectic fit, April 26, 1716. Lord Somers, be

• This illustrious patriot, who has been justly said to have I dispensed blessings by his life, and planned them for posterity,' was born at Worcester, 1652. He was educated at Oxford, and afterwards entered himself of the Middle Temple, where he studied the law with great vigour, judiciously blending it with polite literature. He soon 'distinguished himself at the bar; and in 1681 had a considerable share in a piece intituled, just and modest Vindication of the two last Parliaments. In 1688 he was of counsel for the seven bishops at their trial, and argued with great learning and eloquence against the dispensing power. In the convention which met by the Prince of Orange's summons, Jan. 22, 1688-9, he represented Worcester; and was one of the managers for the house of commons, at a conference with the house of lords, upon the word abdicated. Soon after the accession of King William and Queen Mary to the throne, he was appointed solicitor-general, and received the honour of knight-sides being a most incorrupt lawyer, and honest statesman, hood. In 1692 he was made attorney-general, and in 1693 advanced to the post of lord keeper of the great seal of England. In 1695 he proposed an expedient to prevent the practice of clipping the coin; and the same year was constituted one of the lords justices of England during his majesty's absence, as he was likewise in the two following years. In 1697 he was created Lord Somers, Baron of Evesham, and made

was a master-orator, a genius of the finest taste, a great patron
of men of parts and learning, and was the person who re-
deemed Milton's 'Paradise Lost' from that obscurity in which
party-prejudice and hatred had suffered it long to lie neglect.
ed. He wrote several pieces on the subject of politics, and

translated certain parts of Plutarch and Ovid.
+ Trial of the seven bishops, June 29, 1689.

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