IN the House of Commons the peculiarities of his speech often afforded amusement. But it was pointed out by more than one writer that his broad accent was not without its advantages. Boswell says that it raised the attention of the House by its uncommonness and was equal to tropes and figures in a good English speaker. Wraxall* alleges that his defects of elocution or diction, “by the ludicrous effect that they produced, became often converted into advantages; as they unavoidably operated to force a smile from his bitterest opponents and chequered with momentary good humour the personalities of debate.”*
The friends of Dundas sometimes teased him about his quaint northern expressions. On one occasion, using a common Scotticism, he asked Pitt for the loan of a horse, “the length of Highgate.”* Pitt replied that he was afraid that he had not a horse quite so long as Dundas mentioned, but he had sent the longest he had.
* Sir Nathaniel William Wraxall (1751-1831), 1st Baronet, who served on several occasions as an MP between 1780 and 1794.
* ‘Personalities’ here means insults directed at a specific person. For some, they were all part of the entertainment. See The Decencies of Debate.
* “A very common expression in Scotland, at that time,” explained Edward Bannerman Ramsay in Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character (1908), “to signify the distance to which the ride was to extend.” Highgate is an area a little over four miles north-northwest of central London, to the northeast of Hampstead Heath; today it is a leafy and somewhat fashionable suburb spreading over almost 5¾ square miles. Pitt is William Pitt the Younger (1759-1806), Prime Minister in 1783-1801 and again in 1804-1806.