"I therefore, sir, deliver at your office, inclosed with this "letter, the address and petition I was anxious to have presented "in person to the king, in a way to have known that its contents "had found their way to his majesty's knowledge. "Hoping, sir, I may be informed, when the said address and petition shall have been submitted to his majesty's considera❝tion, I have the honour to be, with much respect, "Sir, "Your most obedient humble servant, "J. CARTWRIGHT." Our correspondence closed with the following reply. "SIR, Whitehall, Jan. 29. 1810. "I have to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, dated "London, January 1810, inclosing a "congratulatory address "and petition" to his majesty; and in reply, I lose no time in "acquainting you, that in pursuance of your request, I have had "the honour to lay the same before the king. 66 Ι am, sir, "Your most obedient humble servant, "R. RYDER." "John Cartwright, Esq. "London. On this correspondence I shall make but two observations. First, then, when his majesty had so graciously and so promptly commanded his Secretary of State to transmit to me the royal answer to my preliminary petition, I was thereby flattered with a hope, that, in due time, when his majesty should have taken into mature consideration, and fully reflected on, the contents of my subsequent address and petition, so infinitely more important than the other, and so personally interesting to himself, I might have learned from his Secretary of State, what were his majesty's sentiments thereon. That time, however, has not yet arrived. What ministers think of the information and the suggestions I wished humbly to have submitted to his majesty, is easy to infer from the tenour of their own counsels and conduct since January. What the king himself thinks of it, or whether, indeed, he, to the present moment, knows of it, remains a matter of mere conjecture. In my petition, ministers themselves are accused of high criminality. One of these ministers is made an "official channel," through whom alone I am allowed to approach my sovereign. He tells me my petition is laid before the king, who unhappily is deprived of sight, but that, unless commanded, he cannot read it to the king. Why, then, I want to know, is it to pass through his hand alone? upon the whole, it is left to the reader to de pa termine, whether this be the right of petitioning which the triots of the revolution thought they had secured to the people of England. Before I close the subject, there is, however, a piece of justice I am desirous of doing to the present ministry. I had imagined that this taking as it were our sovereign into custody, this watchfulness in guarding all approaches, this alarming encroachment on the right of petitioning, had exclusively belonged to the NoPopery gentlemen; but from a subsequent letter from Mr. Secretary Ryder to Lord Holland, respecting an address and petition from the town of Nottingham, we learn that this is by no means the case; that they found the "course" ready made to their hands; as it had been practised by the coalition ministry of the Grenvilles and the Whigs. This seems the more extraordinary, as I know Mr. Fox, on his entrance upon office in 1806, found a great collection of addresses and petitions of the preceding year against Lord Melville, and in favour of reform, which Lord Hawkesbury had not "taken care should be without delay laid before his majesty," on which he (Mr. Fox) expressed disapprobation; with an intention of correcting the abuse. My own address and petition, argumentative and long, is here omitted. It was referred to in the speech of Sir Francis Burdett to his constituents on the 31st of July, 1810, (p. 8.) as "meant to be laid before the king, in order to awaken him to a "true sense of his situation." Now, renowned countrymen !—Inheritors and assertors of liberty! look back and ruminate. Who are the men, entitled to your support? Who are the men, with whom ye can agree in object and in conduct? WHO ARE THE ENLIGHTENED, THE PRACTICAL STATESMEN, OF TALENT AND INTEGRITY, TO PRESERVE OUR LAWS AND LIBERTIES? Are they to be found among either the ministers or the ex-ministers, who have hitherto proved so utterly incompetent to the task; and so much more prone to destroy, than to preserve? Will ye seek them among the opposite factions who, with so little shame, combined in rejecting Mr. Madocks's Inquiry into a ministerial sale of a seat in parliament? Do you hope to find them among any of those parties who have imported foreign mercenary soldiers from Germany, Sicily, and France, to DEFEND your island, that has above two millions five hundred thousand men capable of bearing arms, exclusive of a million more in Ireland? If in those directions it is in vain to look, shall ye dream of finding them among the puerile band of half reformers, who cannot even nibble at the fences of the BOROUGH FACTION I without having their "teeth drawn," and being covered with ridicule? No, my renowned countrymen! The sterling gold of your country's patriotism, like its sterling coin, is, by an evil system, driven out of circulation. Put an end to the system, and it will return. You yourselves, by public exertion in your several districts, must be the restorers of your own freedom and its attendant blessings. Join then, hand and heart, with all who honestly maintain your LEGISLATIVE RIGHTS to representation co-extensive with direct taxation-a fair distribution thereof-and annual parliaments: In short, with one voice assert your RIGHTS, and declare yourselves CONSTITUTIONAL REFORMERS. Then shall ye soon cast anchor in the long wished for haven of liberty and rest! This reformation effected, the hidden treasures of public virtue and wisdom, now deep buried in the bosom of society, will every where abundantly come forth, and freely circulate: The BOROUGH FACTION, Covered with crimes and infamy, will be no more: and then the doors of parliament and of office, "instinct with mind," (as were the Phaacian ships*) will spontaneously fly open to patriot representatives of a free people, and to PRACTICAL STATESMEN, OF TALENT AND INTEGRITY, TO PRESERVE OUR LAWS AND LIBERTIES! Homer's Odyssey. APPENDIX. LET those who turn their anxious thoughts to the means of PEACE, peruse the following letter, intended to have been inserted in a preceding part of this book. It was from a retired Colonel, a man of ability and independent fortune. Being no longer under the temptation of giving military opinions with a view to professional advantages, both Mr. Pitt and Mr. Dundas wert wont to consult him on the defence of our island. "Dear Sir, Bath, 25th Dec. 1803. "You have my best thanks for your kind attention, já sending me a copy of the Ægis. My impatience to read it led me to "Phillips's as soon as I arrived in London. "If it afford the same conviction to the minds those in power, as it has to mine, the country may loo for an "honourable and secure peace: At all events, those who read your work, must think you, as I do, highly entitled to the gratitude of your fellow citizens. "Believe me, dear sir, with sincere esteem, "John Cartwright, Esq." Those who can hope for any thing deserving the name of PEACE with NAPOLEON, without first restoring to "full vigour and energy" the two VITAL ORGANS of the state, are, in my view of the matter, just as free from insanity, as the governor of a town would be, who should think of resisting a besieging army, having an immense artillery, with a garrison that had neither bread nor gunpowder; an expectation on a par with that of our "moderate reformers," on the means of resisting the BOROUGH FACTION. The reader will have observed, in different parts of this "Co MPARISON," the introduction of blanks. They are none of mine. I should have been ashamed of them, had they not been introduced at the request of, and in consideration for, my printer and bookseller; to free them from apprehension, in what their learned adviser terms "these base times.' The words which have been displaced being those only of contempt and indignation, their omission. will not injure my argument. If the CONSTITUTION-if POLITICAL LIBERTY-if those LEGISLATIVE RIGHTS in which that Liberty consists, be to this natio a common inheritance, and the most invaluable of all propert why are not the BOROUGH-MONGERS, who have of robbed y community of the greater part of that property-who notoriousy make sale of seats in parliament-and who, by such means, incessantly pillage the suffering nation--why, I ask, are not these BOROUGH-MONGERS indictable in our courts of law, at any man's suit, of felony, as robbers; and of treason, as subsubverters of the constitution?-are we neither to have our remedy at law, nor to express our abhorrence and indignation ? J. M'CREERY, Printer, Black-Horse-Court, Lendon. FINIS. |