John Morley: “Historians coolly dissect a man’s thoughts as they please; and label them like specimens in a naturalist’s cabinet.”

What I endeavoured to show was that King George III., without changing his opinion of the justice of his war against the colonies, was obliged to give it up on account of a change of public opinion, and was not open to blame for so doing.

But the Poet Laureate has written his own song on the hearts of his countrymen that can never die.

The omnipotent though not omniscient divinity called public opinion intervened.

All alike concerned themselves with its truth or falsehood, with what they counted to be its abstract fitness or unfitness.