We, your Majesty’s dutiful and loyal subjects, the Freeholders of the
County of Middlesex, beg leave, with all affectionate submission and
humility, to throw ourselves at your royal feet, and humbly to implore
your paternal attention to those grievances of which this county and
the whole nation complain, and those fearful apprehensions with which
the whole British Empire is most justly alarmed.
With great grief and sorrow we have long beheld the endeavours of
certain evil-minded persons, who attempt to infuse into your royal mind
notions and opinions of the most dangerous and pernicious tendency, and
who promote and counsel such measures as cannot fail to destroy that
harmony and confidence which should ever subsist between a just and
virtuous prince and a free and loyal people.
For this disaffected purpose they have introduced into every part of
the administration of our happy legal constitution a certain unlimited
and indefinite discretionary power, to prevent which is the sole aim
of all our laws, and was the sole cause of all those disturbances
and revolutions which formerly distracted this unhappy country; for
our ancestors, by their own fatal experience, well knew that in a
state where discretion begins, law, liberty, and safety end. Under
the pretence of this discretion, or, as it was formerly, and has been
lately, called, Law of state, we have seen
English subjects, and even a member of the British Legislature,
arrested by virtue of a general warrant issued by a secretary of state,
contrary to the law of the land.
Their houses rifled and plundered, their papers seized, and used as
evidence upon trial.
Their bodies committed to close imprisonment.
The Habeas Corpus eluded.
Trial by jury discountenanced, and the first law officer of the crown
publicly insinuating that juries are not to be trusted.
Printers punished by the ministry in the supreme court without a trial
by their equals, without any trial at all.
The remedy of the law for false imprisonment debarred and defeated.
The plaintiff and his attorney, for their appeal to the law of the
land, punished by expenses and imprisonment, and made, by forced
engagements, to desist from their legal claim.
A writing determined to be a libel by a court where it was not
cognizable in the first instance; contrary to law, because all appeal
is thereby cut off, and inferior courts and juries influenced by such
predetermination.
A person condemned in the said courts as the author of the supposed
libel, unheard, without defence or trial.
Unjust treatment of petitions, by selecting only such parts as might be
wrested to criminate the petitioner, and refusing to hear those which
might procure him redress.
The thanks of one branch of the Legislature proposed by a minister to
be given to an acknowledged offender for his offence, with the declared
intention of screening him from the law.
Attachments wrested from their original intent of removing obstructions
to the proceedings of law, to punish by sentence of arbitrary fine and
imprisonment, without trial or appeal, supposed offences committed out
of court.
Perpetual imprisonment of an Englishman without trial, conviction, or
sentence, by the same mode of attachment, wherein the same person is at
once party, accuser, judge, and jury.
Instead of the ancient and legal civil police, the military introduced
at every opportunity, unnecessarily and unlawfully patrolling the
streets, to the alarm and terror of the inhabitants.
The lives of many of your Majesty’s innocent subjects destroyed by
military execution.
Such military execution solemnly adjudged to be legal.
Murder abetted, encouraged, and rewarded.
The civil magistracy rendered contemptible by the appointment of
improper and incapable persons.
The civil magistrates tampered with by administration, and neglecting
and refusing to discharge their duty.
Mobs and riots hired and raised by the ministry, in order to justify
and recommend their own illegal proceedings, and to prejudice your
Majesty’s mind by false insinuations against the loyalty of your
Majesty’s subjects.
The freedom of election violated by corrupt and undue influence, by
unpunished violence and murder.
The just verdicts of juries and the opinion of the judges overruled
by false representations to your Majesty; and the determinations of
the law set aside, by new, unprecedented, and dangerous means; thereby
leaving the guilty without restraint, and the injured without redress,
and the lives of your Majesty’s subjects at the mercy of every ruffian
protected by administration.
Obsolete and vexatious claims of the crown set on foot for partial and
election purposes.
Partial attacks on the liberty of the press, the most daring and
pernicious libels against the constitution and against the liberty of
the subject being allowed to pass unnoticed, whilst the slightest libel
against a minister is punished with the utmost rigour.
Wicked attempts to increase and establish a standing army, by
endeavouring to vest in the crown an unlimited power over the militia,
which, should they succeed, must, sooner or later, subvert the
constitution, by augmenting the power of administration in proportion
to their delinquency.
Repeated endeavours to diminish the importance of members of parliament
individually, in order to render them more dependent on administration
collectively. Even threats having been employed by ministers to
suppress the freedom of debate; and the wrath of parliament denounced
against measures authorized by the law of the land.
Resolutions of one branch of the legislature set up as the law of
the land, being a direct usurpation of the rights of the two other
branches, and therefore a manifest infringement of the constitution.
Public money shamefully squandered and unaccounted for, and all inquiry
into the cause of arrears in the civil list prevented by the ministry.
Inquiry into a paymaster’s public accounts stopped in the exchequer,
though the sums accounted for by that paymaster amount to above forty
millions sterling.
Public loans perverted to private ministerial purposes.
Prostitution of public honours and rewards to men who can neither plead
public virtue nor services.
Irreligion and immorality, so eminently discountenanced by your
Majesty’s royal example, encouraged by administration, both by example
and precept.
The same discretion has been extended by the same evil counsellors to
your Majesty’s dominions in America, and has produced to our suffering
fellow-subjects in that part of the world grievances and apprehensions
similar to those which we complain of at home.
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