Lord Sunderland desired him to be sent about his business, saying that
no such mean fellow should sit at his Treasury.' Fitzmaurice's
_Shelburne_, i. 34.
[351] I do not know what was at this time the state of the parliamentary
interest of the ancient family of Lowther; a family before the Conquest;
but all the nation knows it to be very extensive at present. A due
mixture of severity and kindness, oeconomy and munificence,
characterises its present Representative. BOSWELL. Boswell, most
unhappily not clearly seeing where his own genius lay, too often sought
to obtain fame and position by the favour of some great man. For some
years he courted in a very gross manner 'the present Representative,'
the first Earl of Lonsdale, who treated him with great brutality.
_Letters of Boswell_, pp. 271, 294, 324, and _ante_, iv. May 15, 1783.
In the _Ann. Reg._ 1771, p. 56, it is shewn how by this bad man 'the
whole county of Cumberland was thrown into a state of the greatest
terror and confusion; four hundred ejectments were served in one day.'
Dr. A. Carlyle (_Auto._ p. 418) says that 'he was more detested than any
man alive, as a shameless political sharper, a domestic bashaw, and an
intolerable tyrant over his tenants and dependants.' Lord Albemarle
(_Memoirs of Rockingham,_ ii. 70) describes the 'bad Lord Lonsdale. He
exacted a serf-like submission from his poor and abject dependants.
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