Engraved from an original Picture, by Bocquet Colonel Wardle.) Published by Tho Kelly, Paternoster-row, June 24-1009. AND ENUMERATING THOSE GENTLEMEN WHO WERE MOST CON- BY HIS INQUIRY INTO THE CONDUCT OF THE LATE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF. OTHE By W. HAMILTON REID. The Duty which I owe to my Country is paramount to every Mr. Wardle. LONDON: PRINTED FOR T. KELLY, NO. 52, PATERNOSTER ROW. 1809. 210.m.992. PREFACE. THOUGH the reader may understand by the Title-page, that this Work consists of an account of the most important circumstances attending the late meetings in various parts of the country, collected here into one point of view; it may be necessary to peruse the whole, to learn that the Mèmoirs of Col. Wardle, and the discussions that follow them, have denounced and developed such a system of venality, profligacy, and corruption, as has no precedent in the history of Great Britain. Here great names and characters, instead of checking, will be found to have established and given consequence to crimes. Here it will appear, that corruption, admitted and avowed, has been carried on with such unparalleled effrontery, that the perpetrators might at length have seemed to have had a special privilege for dispensing with religion and justice; and it might even have been supposed there was one law for the governors, and another for the governed, had it not been observed, "that they die like other men.' But, notwithstanding, in the expo sure of a system thus outraging all common feelings, the reader will find the honest indignation of Englishmen expressed with their usual plain good sense, divested of party-spirit, and governed by that moderation to which faction is always a stranger. To the credit of every person concerned, neither the object nor the conduct of any of these meetings bear the least resemblance with those Democratic Societies which unhappily agitated this country during the worst periods of the French Revolution. They entertained some of the most extravagant theories with respect to the religion of the country, as well as the form of Government. The present meetings require no change in either. They ask no more than a faithful execution of the laws and the Constitution already established. Founded upon this liberal basis, the friends of Reform have a claim upon the approbation of all ranks, the nobles, the |