No regular communication of the proofs of loyalty and attachment to the Constitution, alluded to in the speech from the throne, have been laid before this House, in order to enable us to judge of the nature, tendency, or occasion of them, or in what particular acts they were displayed; but if we are to suppose the manifestations of loyalty (which are held out to us as an example for imitation) consist in certain addresses delivered to his Majesty, promising support to his Majesty in the exercise of his prerogative, and thanking his Majesty for removing certain of his ministers, on account of the votes they have given upon bills depending in Parliament,—­if this be the example of loyalty alluded to in the speech from the throne, then we must beg leave to express our serious concern for the impression which has been made on any of our fellow-subjects by misrepresentations which have seduced them into a seeming approbation of proceedings subversive of their own freedom.  We conceive that the opinions delivered in these papers were not well considered; nor were the parties duly informed of the nature of the matters on which they were called to determine, nor of those proceedings of Parliament which they were led to censure.

We shall act more advisedly.—­The loyalty we shall manifest will not be the same with theirs; but, we trust, it will be equally sincere, and more enlightened.  It is no slight authority which shall persuade us (by receiving as proofs of loyalty the mistaken principles lightly taken up in these addresses) obliquely to criminate, with the heavy and ungrounded charge of disloyalty and disaffection, an uncorrupt, independent, and reforming Parliament.[61] Above all, we shall take care that none of the rights and privileges, always claimed, and since the accession of his Majesty’s illustrious family constantly exercised by this House, (and which we hold and exercise in trust for the Commons of Great Britain, and for their benefit,) shall be constructively surrendered, or even weakened and impaired, under ambiguous phrases and implications of censure on the late Parliamentary proceedings.  If these claims are not well founded, they ought to be honestly abandoned; if they are just, they ought to be steadily and resolutely maintained.

Of his Majesty’s own gracious disposition towards the true principles of our free Constitution his faithful Commons never did or could entertain a doubt; but we humbly beg leave to express to his Majesty our uneasiness concerning other new and unusual expressions of his ministers, declaratory of a resolution “to support in their just balance the rights and privileges of every branch of the legislature.”