You have still an honourable part to act.  The affections of your subjects may still be recovered.  But before you subdue their hearts you must gain a noble victory over your own.  Discard those little, personal resentments which have too long directed your public conduct.  Pardon this man the remainder of his punishment; and, if resentment still prevails, make it what it should have been long since—­an act, not of mercy, but of contempt.  He will soon fall back into his natural station, a silent senator, and hardly supporting the weekly eloquence of a newspaper.  The gentle breath of peace would leave him on the surface, neglected and unremoved.  It is only the tempest that lifts him from his place.

Without consulting your minister, call together your whole council.  Let it appear to the public that you can determine and act for yourself.  Come forward to your people.  Lay aside the wretched formalities of a king, and speak to your subjects with the spirit of a man and in the language of a gentleman.  Tell them you have been fatally deceived.  The acknowledgment will be no disgrace, but rather an honour, to your understanding.  Tell them you are determined to remove every cause of complaint against your government, that you will give your confidence to no man who does not possess the confidence of your subjects, and leave it to themselves to determine, by their conduct at a future election, whether or no it be in reality the general sense of the nation that their rights have been arbitrarily invaded by the present House of Commons, and the constitution betrayed.  They will then do justice to their representatives and to themselves.

These sentiments, Sir, and the style they are conveyed in, may be offensive, perhaps, because they are new to you.  Accustomed to the language of courtiers, you measure their affections by the vehemence of their expressions, and when they only praise you indifferently, you admire their sincerity.  But this is not a time to trifle with your fortune.  They deceive you, Sir, who tell you that you have many friends, whose affections are founded upon a principle of personal attachment.  The first foundation of friendship is not the power of conferring benefits, but the equality with which they are received and may be returned.  The fortune which made you a king forbade you to have a friend.  It is a law of nature which cannot be violated with impunity.  The mistaken prince who looks for friendship will find a favourite, and in that favourite the ruin of his affairs.

The people of England are loyal to the House of Hanover, not from a vain preference of one family to another, but from a conviction that the establishment of that family was necessary to the support of their civil and religious liberties.  This, Sir, is a principle of allegiance equally solid and rational, fit for Englishmen to adopt, and well worthy of your Majesty’s encouragement.  We cannot long be deluded by nominal distinctions.  The name of Stuart, of itself, is only contemptible; armed with the sovereign authority, their principles are formidable.  The prince who imitates their conduct should be warned by their example, and, while he plumes himself upon the security of his title to the crown, should remember that, as it was acquired by one revolution, it may be lost by another.