jority was returned in the
next session, and the Whigs were extinguished as a party for nearly
twenty years. Lord Eldon records a curious acknowledgment of Fox with
respect to the power of the pencil. "Sayers's caricatures," said he,
"did me more mischief than the debates in Parliament or the attacks of
the press." Lord Eldon observes that the prints of Carlo Khan; Fox
running away with the India House; Fox and Burke quitting Paradise when
turned out of office, and similar publications, had certainly a vast
effect on the public mind. Let HB triumph on this, and make his claim on
the ministry. Scott was again returned for Weobly, and gives a curious
instance of the slight incidents by which elections are sometimes
determined. In crossing the country from Lancaster to the hustings at
his borough, he stopped at the last stage to have his hair dressed. The
hairdresser asked him whether Sir Gilbert Elliott was not one of the
seven kings--a name of ridicule given to Fox's seven proposed
commissioners for India. "Because," said the man, "there is a Sir
Gilbert Elliott a candidate for the borough; and we are all agreed that,
if he is one of the seven kings, we will have nothing to say to him; and
as we wish to be sure about it, and as you must know, sir, excuse my
freedom in asking whether he really is one of the seven kings." Scott
answered that he certainly was. The hairdresser immediately made
proclamation of the fact, and Sir Gilbert was totally defeated.

Very curious instances of character occur in the experience of counsel.
Lord Eldon gives one of them as occurring to himself. "Once," said he,
"I had a very handsome offer made to me. I was pleading for the rights
of the inhabitants of the Isle of Man. Now I had been reading in Coke,
and I found there that the people in the Isle of Man were no beggars,"
(the words are, 'The inhabitants of this Isle are religious,
industrious, and true people, without begging or stealing.') "I
therefore do not beg their rights, I demand them. This so pleased an old
smuggler who was present, that when the trial was over, he called me
aside and said, 'Young gentleman, I tell you what, you shall have my
daughter if you will marry her, and one hundred thousand pounds for her
fortune.' That was a very handsome offer, but I told him that I happened
to have a wife who had nothing for her fortune, therefore I must stick
to her." In December of this year 1784, Johnson died. "He was a good
man," sai