upon themselves those suspicions which will ever pursue the steps of public men who abandon the direct road which leads to the welfare of their country.  It was suspected that they had taken this part against the dictates of conscience, and from selfishness and cowardice; that, from the first, they reasoned thus within themselves:—­’If the act be indeed so criminal as there is cause to believe that the public will pronounce it to be; and if it shall continue to be regarded as such; great odium must sooner or later fall upon those who have appointed the agents:  and this odium, which will be from the first considerable, in spite of the astonishment and indignation of which the framers of the Convention may be the immediate object, will, when the astonishment has relaxed, and the angry passions have died away, settle (for many causes) more heavily upon those who, by placing such men in the command, are the original source of the guilt and the dishonour.  How then is this most effectually to be prevented?  By endeavouring to prevent or to destroy, as far as may be, the odium attached to the act itself.’  For which purpose it was suspected that the rejoicings had been ordered; and that afterwards (when the people had declared themselves so loudly),—­partly upon the plea of the good faith of the Nation being pledged, and partly from a false estimate of the comparative force of the two obligations,—­the Convention, in the same selfish spirit, was carried into effect:  and that the ministry took upon itself a final responsibility, with a vain hope that, by so doing and incorporating its own credit with the transaction, it might bear down the censures of the people, and overrule their judgment to the super-inducing of a belief, that the treaty was not so unjust and inexpedient:  and thus would be included—­in one sweeping exculpation—­the misdeeds of the servant and the master.

But,—­whether these suspicions were reasonable or not, whatever motives produced a determination that the Convention should be acted upon,—­there can be no doubt of the manner in which the ministry wished that the people should appreciate it; when the same persons, who had ordered that it should at first be received with rejoicing, availed themselves of his Majesty’s high authority to give a harsh reproof to the City of London for having prayed ’that an enquiry might be instituted into this dishonourable and unprecedented transaction.’  In their petition they styled it also ’an afflicting event—­humiliating and degrading to the country, and injurious to his Majesty’s Allies.’  And for this, to the astonishment and grief of all sound minds, the petitioners were severely reprimanded; and told, among other admonitions, ’that it was inconsistent with the principles of British jurisprudence to pronounce judgement without previous investigation.’