=Source.=--_Annual Register, 1820._ Appendix to Chronicle, p. 749.
_The King's Speech to the New Parliament_ (_Thursday, April 27_).
"My Lords and Gentlemen;
"I have taken the earliest occasion of assembling you here, after
having referred to the sense of my people.
"In meeting you personally, for the first time since the death of
my beloved father, I am anxious to assure you, that I shall always
continue to imitate his great example, in unceasing attention to
the public interests, and in paternal solicitude for the welfare
and happiness of all classes of my subjects.
"I have received from foreign powers renewed assurances of their
friendly disposition, and of their earnest desire to cultivate with
me the relations of peace and amity.
"Gentlemen of the House of Commons;
"The estimates for the present year will be laid before you.
"They have been framed upon principles of strict economy; but it is
to me matter of the deepest regret that the state of the country
has not allowed me to dispense with those additions to our military
force which I announced at the commencement of the last session of
parliament.
"The first object to which your attention will be directed is the
provision to be made for the support of the civil government, and
of the honour and dignity of the crown.
"I leave entirely at your disposal my interest in the hereditary
revenues; and I cannot deny myself the gratification of declaring,
that so far from desiring any arrangement which might lead to
the imposition of new burthens upon my people, or even might
diminish, on my account, the amount of the reductions incident to
my accession to the throne, I can have no wish, under circumstances
like the present, that any addition whatever should be made to the
settlement adopted by parliament in the year 1816.
"My Lords and Gentlemen;
"Deeply as I regret that the machinations and designs of the
disaffected should have led in some parts of the country to
acts of open violence and insurrection, I cannot but express my
satisfaction at the promptitude with which those attempts have been
suppressed by the vigilance and activity of the magistrates, and
by the zealous co-operation of all those of my subjects, whose
exertions have been called forth to support the authority of the
laws.
"The wisdom and firmness manifested by the late parliament, and
the due execution of the laws, have greatly contributed to restore
confidence throughout the kingdom, and to discountenance those
principles of sedition and irreligion which had been disseminated
with such malignant perseverance, and had poisoned the minds of the
ignorant and unwary.
"I rely upon the continued support of parliament in my
determination to maintain, by all the means intrusted to my hands,
the public safety and tranquillity.
"Deploring, as we all must, the distress which still unhappily
prevails among many of the labouring classes of the community,
and anxiously looking forward to its removal or mitigation, it is
in the meantime our common duty effectually to protect the loyal,
the peaceable, and the industrious, against those practices of
turbulence and intimidation by which the period of relief can only
be deferred, and by which the pressure of the distress has been
incalculably aggravated.
"I trust, that an awakened sense of the dangers which they have
incurred, and of the arts which have been employed to seduce
them, will bring back by far the greater part of those who have
been unhappily led astray, and will revive in them that spirit
of loyalty, that due submission to the laws, and that attachment
to the constitution, which subsist unabated in the hearts of the
great body of the people, and which, under the blessing of Divine
Providence, have secured to the British nation the enjoyment of a
larger share of practical freedom, as well as of prosperity and
happiness, than have fallen to the lot of any nation in the world."