Such are the grievances and apprehensions which have long discontented
and disturbed the greatest and best part of your Majesty’s loyal
subjects. Unwilling, however, to interrupt your royal repose,
though ready to lay down our lives and fortunes for your Majesty’s
service, and for the constitution as by law established, we have
waited patiently, expecting a constitutional remedy by the means of
our own representatives, but our legal and free choice having been
repeatedly rejected, and the right of election now finally taken from
us by the unprecedented seating of a candidate who was never chosen
by the county, and who, even to become a candidate, was obliged
fraudulently to vacate his seat in parliament, under the pretence of
an insignificant place, invited thereto by the prior declaration of a
minister, that whoever opposed our choice, though but with four votes,
should be declared member for the county. We see ourselves, by this
last act, deprived even of the franchises of Englishmen, reduced to
the most abject state of slavery, and left without hopes or means of
redress but from your Majesty or God.
Deign then, most gracious Sovereign, to listen to the prayer of the
most faithful of your Majesty’s subjects; and to banish from your royal
favour, trust, and confidence, for ever, those evil and pernicious
counsellors who have endeavoured to alienate the affection of your
Majesty’s most sincere and dutiful subjects, and whose suggestions tend
to deprive your people of their dearest and most essential rights, and
who have traitorously dared to depart from the spirit and letter of
those laws which have secured the crown of these realms to the House of
Brunswick, in which we make our most earnest prayers to God that it may
continue untarnished to the latest posterity.
Signed by 1565 Freeholders.
THE CITY OF LONDON AND THE EARL OF CHATHAM ON PARLIAMENTARY REFORM
(1770).
=Source.=--_Letters of Junius._ London: G. Bell and Sons. 1910. Vol. i.
At a Common Council holden on the 14th of May, 1770, it was resolved:
“That the grateful thanks of this court be presented to the Right
Hon. William Earl of Chatham, for the zeal he has shown in support of
those most valuable and sacred privileges, the right of election, and
the right of petition; and for his wishes and declaration, that his
endeavours shall hereafter be used that parliaments may be restored to
their original purity, by shortening their duration, and introducing a
more full and equal representation, an act which will render his name
more honoured by posterity than the memorable successes of the glorious
war he conducted.”
* * * * *
To this vote of thanks the Earl of Chatham made the following reply to
the committee deputed to present it to his Lordship:
* * * * *