Upon this charge, as re-echoed in its general import by persons who have been over-awed or deceived, and by others who have been wilful deceivers, I have already incidentally animadverted; and repelled it, I trust, with becoming, indignation.  I shall now meet the charge for the last time formally and directly; on account of considerations applicable to all times; and because the whole course of domestic proceedings relating to the Convention of Cintra, combined with menaces which have been recently thrown out in the lower House of Parliament, renders it too probable that a league has been framed for the purpose of laying further restraints upon freedom of speech and of the press; and that the reprimand to the City of London was devised by ministers as a preparatory overt act of this scheme; to the great abuse of the Sovereign’s Authority, and in contempt of the rights of the Nation.  In meeting this charge, I shall shew to what desperate issues men are brought, and in what woeful labyrinths they are entangled, when, under the pretext of defending instituted law, they violate the laws of reason and nature for their own unhallowed purposes.

If the persons, who signed this petition, acted inconsistently with the principles of British jurisprudence; the offence must have been committed by giving an answer, before adequate and lawful evidence had entitled them so to do, to one or other of these questions:—­’What is the act? and who is the agent?’—­or to both conjointly.  Now the petition gives no opinion upon the agent; it pronounces only upon the act, and that some one must be guilty; but who—­it does not take upon itself to say.  It condemns the act; and calls for punishment upon the authors, whosoever they may be found to be; and does no more.  After the analysis which has been made of the Convention, I may ask if there be any thing in this which deserves reproof; and reproof from an authority which ought to be most enlightened and most dispassionate,—­as it is, next to the legislative, the most solemn authority in the Land.

It is known to every one that the privilege of complaint and petition, in cases where the Nation feels itself aggrieved, itself being the judge, (and who else ought to be, or can be?)—­a privilege, the exercise of which implies condemnation of something complained of, followed by a prayer for its removal or correction—­not only is established by the most grave and authentic charters of Englishmen, who have been taught by their wisest statesmen and legislators to be jealous over its preservation, and to call it into practice upon every reasonable occasion; but also that this privilege is an indispensable condition of all civil liberty.  Nay, of such paramount interest is it to mankind, existing under any frame of Government whatsoever; that, either by law or custom, it has universally prevailed under all governments—­from the Grecian and Swiss Democracies to the Despotisms of Imperial Rome, of Turkey, and of France under her