, about the partition of his
great estate, were now firmly united in an association against this unfortunate
gentleman; mutual deeds were executed among them, by which many great lordships
and estates were given up by the uncle to persons who had no right to possess
them, in order to engage them to side with him against his nephew, in
withholding the unjust possession of the remainder.
    These confederates having held several consultations against their common
enemy, and finding that his cause gathered daily strength since the trial, by
the accession of many witnesses of figure and reputation, who had not been heard
of before; and that the only chance they had to prevent the speedy establishment
of his right, and their own destruction, was by stripping Mr. M--r of the little
money that yet remained, and stopping all further resources whereby he might be
enabled to proceed; they, therefore, came to a determined resolution to carry
that hopeful scheme into execution; and, in pursuance thereof, they have left no
expedient or stratagem, how extraordinary or scandalous soever, unpractised to
distress Mr. An-y and that gentleman. For that end, all the oppressive arts and
dilatory expensive contrivances that the fertile invention of the lowest
pettifoggers of the law could possibly devise, have with great dexterity been
played off against them in fruitless, quibbling, and malicious suits, intirely
foreign to the merits of the cause. Not to mention numberless other acts of
oppression, the most extraordinary and unprecedented proceedings, by means
whereof this sham writ of error hath been kept on foot ever since November 1743,
is to me (said the doctor) a most flagrant instance, not only of the prevalency
of power and money, (when employed, as in the present case, against an
unfortunate, helpless man, disabled, as he is, of the means of ascertaining his
right) but of the badness of a cause, that hath recourse to so many iniquitous
expedients to support it.
    In a word, the whole conduct of lord A--a and his party, from the beginning
to this time, hath been such, as sufficiently manifests, that it could proceed
from no other motives than a consciousness of Mr. A-y's right, and of their own
illegal usurpations, and from a terror of trusting the merits of their case to a
fair discussion by the laws of their country: and that the intention and main
drift of all their proceedings plainly tends to stifle and smother the merits of
the case from the knowledge of the world, by oppressive arts and ingenious
delays, rather than trust it to
