The very same year the County Palatine of Chester received the same relief from its oppressions and the same remedy to its disorders.  Before this time Chester was little less distempered than Wales.  The inhabitants, without rights themselves, were the fittest to destroy the rights of others; and from thence Richard the Second drew the standing army of archers with which for a time he oppressed England.  The people of Chester applied to Parliament in a petition penned as I shall read to you: 

“To the King, our Sovereign Lord, in most hunible wise shewen unto your excellent Majesty the inhabitants of your Grace’s County Palatine of Chester:  (1) That where the said County Palatine of Chester is and hath been always hitherto exempt, excluded, and separated out and from your High Court of Parliament, to have any Knights and Burgesses within the said Court; by reason whereof the said inhabitants have hitherto sustained manifold disherisons, losses, and damages, as well in their lands, goods, and bodies, as in the good, civil, and politic governance and maintenance of the commonwealth of their said county; (2) And forasmuch as the said inhabitants have always hitherto been bound by the Acts and Statutes made and ordained by your said Highness and your most noble progenitors, by authority of the said Court, as far forth as other counties, cities, and boroughs have been, that have had their Knights and Burgesses within your said Court of Parliament, and yet have had neither Knight ne Burgess there for the said County Palatine, the said inhabitants, for lack thereof, have been oftentime touched and grieved with Acts and Statutes made within the said Court, as well derogatory unto the most ancient jurisdictions, liberties, and privileges of your said County Palatine, as prejudicial unto the commonwealth, quietness, rest, and peace of your Grace’s most bounden subjects inhabiting within the same.”

What did Parliament with this audacious address?—­Reject it as a libel?  Treat it as an affront to Government?  Spurn it as a derogation from the rights of legislature?  Did they toss it over the table?  Did they burn it by the hands of the common hangman?—­They took the petition of grievance, all rugged as it was, without softening or temperament, unpurged of the original bitterness and indignation of complaint—­they made it the very preamble to their Act of redress, and consecrated its principle to all ages in the sanctuary of legislation.

Here is my third example.  It was attended with the success of the two former.  Chester, civilized as well as Wales, has demonstrated that freedom, and not servitude, is the cure of anarchy; as religion, and not atheism, is the true remedy for superstition.  Sir, this pattern of Chester was followed in the reign of Charles the Second with regard to the County Palatine of Durham, which is my fourth example.  This county had long lain out of the pale of free legislation.  So scrupulously was the example of Chester followed that the style of the preamble is nearly the same with that of the Chester Act, and, without affecting the abstract extent of the authority of Parliament, it recognizes the equity of not suffering any considerable district in which the British subjects may act as a body, to be taxed without their own voice in the grant.