A History of Parliamentary Elections and Electioneering 45
“But soon more surpris’d, and I’ll tell you the cause, sir,
The heads on Temple Bar were in a deep discourse, sir.
‘Why, Fletcher,[55] your head and mine has been fixed hither
These full twenty years, expos’d to all weather
For being concerned in a Scottish rebellion:
Not like Bute, the nation to rob of three million.’
‘Ay, Townsend, but Bute play’d the jockey so fair, sir,
Got the money for riding the old Georgian mare, sir,
But his tricks at St. James’s Wilkes soon did disclose, sir,
Tho’ squint-ey’d, saw how Bute led the King by the nose, sir.’
‘Why, Fletcher, that’s worse than open rebellion!
And here’s room on the Bar if they would but behead him;
In St. George’s Fields there’s room for a gibbet,
But justice of late, they don’t choose to exhibit.
If justice took place, ’twould cause Jack some trouble,
Lord Mansfield himself, might, by chance, mount the scaffold.
No more alt’ring records; but this joke might be said,
As blind with the scales, he appears without head.
* * * * *
And half a score more, tuck’d up in a halter;
But don’t forget to hang Luttrell and Proctor,
For ’tis such rogues as these that corrupted the nation,
And caus’d these disturbances, strife, and vexation.
Then the King would be freed from all of roguish party,
And let those fill their places who are loyal and hearty.’”
CHAPTER VIII.
PETITIONS AND REMONSTRANCES TO THE THRONE, 1769-70.
Petitions and remonstrances began to make ministers tremble lest
finally the sympathies of the throne might be turned into the proper
channel, and the king be led to espouse the cause of the people, who,
to do them justice, remained loyal under both the critical emergencies
described as occurring under Charles II. and George III., and which had
more than a casual resemblance.
The remonstrances of the citizens were persistently laid before the
king, although every obstacle was interposed in the way of their
presentation by petty indignities imposed upon those bold enough to
approach the presence with objects thus distasteful to the royal ideas
of sovereign right--
“Make prayers not so like petitions
As overtures and propositions.”
(_Hudibras._)
On July 5, 1769, the Livery of London presented a petition to the king;
the lord mayor, Samuel Turner, Sir Robert Ladbrooke,[56] Alderman
Beckford, and other friends of popular liberty being charged with this
statement of grievances, of which the following extracts must suffice:--
“We should be wanting in our duty to your Majesty, as well as
to ourselves and our posterity, should we forbear to represent
to the throne the desperate attempts that have been, and are
too successfully, made to destroy that constitution to the
spirit of which we owe the relation which subsists between your
Majesty and the subjects of these realms, and to subvert those
sacred laws which our ancestors have sealed with their blood.
“Your ministers, from corrupt principles and in violation of
every duty, have, by various enumerated means, invaded our
invaluable and inalienable right of trial by jury.
“They have, with impunity, issued general warrants, and
violently seized persons and private papers.
“They have rendered the laws non-effective to our security, by
invading the Habeas Corpus.
“They have caused punishments and even perpetual imprisonment
to be inflicted, without trial, conviction, or sentence.
“They have brought into disrepute the civil magistracy, by the
appointment of persons who are, in many respects, unqualified
for that important trust, and have thereby purposely furnished
a pretence for calling in the aid of the military power.
“They avow, and endeavour to establish, a maxim absolutely
inconsistent with our constitution, that ‘an occasion for
effectually employing a military force always presents itself,
when the civil power is trifled with or insulted;’ and by a
fatal and false application of this maxim, they have wantonly
and wickedly sacrificed the lives of many of your Majesty’s
innocent subjects, and have prostituted your Majesty’s sacred
name and authority, to justify, applaud, and recommend their
own illegal and bloody actions.
“They have screened more than one murderer from punishment, and
in its place have unnaturally substituted reward.
* * * * *
“And after having insulted and defeated the law on different
occasions, and by different contrivances, both at home and
abroad, they have at length completed their design, by
violently wresting from the people the _last sacred right
we had left_, the right of election, by the unprecedented
seating of a candidate notoriously set up and chosen only by
themselves. They have thereby taken from your subjects all
hopes of parliamentary redress, and have left us no resource,
under God, but in your Majesty.
“All this they have been able to effect by corruption; by
a scandalous misapplication and embezzlement of the public
treasure, and a shameful prostitution of public honours and
employments; procuring deficiencies of the civil lists to be
made good without examinations; and, instead of punishing,
conferring honours on a paymaster, the public defaulter of
unaccounted millions.
“From an unfeigned sense of the duty we owe to your Majesty,
and to our country, we have ventured thus humbly to lay before
the throne these great and important truths, which it has been
the business of your Ministers to conceal. We most earnestly
beseech your Majesty to grant us redress. It is for the purpose
of redress alone, and for such occasions as the present,
that those great and extensive powers are entrusted to the
Crown by the wisdom of that Constitution which your Majesty’s
illustrious family was chosen to defend, and which we trust in
God it will for ever continue to support.”
Of each paragraph given in the foregoing the meaning was conclusive,
the instance known to all. There is in this petition no statement
exaggerated, no sentiment overcoloured, considering that one paragraph
alone describes no less than the suicidal measures which dismembered
the empire, and cost the mother country the allegiance of “the
colonies,” _i.e._ the continent of America, in these plain words:--
“They [the Grafton administration] have established numberless
unconstitutional regulations and taxations in our colonies.
They have caused a revenue to be raised in some of them by
prerogative.”
However meritorious the cause, it was an offence to a king whose mind,
never remarkable for lucidity, was then under “the influence of the
worst of counsellors,” as stated in the first prayer of the petition.
The document--when the petitioners were, after much discouragement,
delay, and many subterfuges, and, “although no time could be fixed for
its acceptance,” permitted to approach the presence at a levee--was
at last presented; but the king made no reply, but, handing the
petition to the lord-in-waiting, turned his back on the presenters,
who represented the integrity and commercial greatness of the city of
London and were its elected guardians, and addressed Baron Dieden, the
Danish ambassador, who was standing in his vicinity, on an indifferent
topic.
After the late fulsome reception of “bogus addressers” nothing could
be more contemptible than the studied impertinence with which the
Corporation of London was treated, and the affront of leaving the civil
magistrate to
“skulk about the passages of the Court that he may have a
glimpse of His Majesty as he passes along in state, in order
to deliver into his hands a remonstrance affecting the most
essential interests of above twelve millions of people, who by
the sweat of their brow support the pomp and parade of royalty
and swell the fastidious pride and coxcombical vanity of empty
courtiers.”
It was boldly hazarded at this emergency, from the premeditated affront
to the representatives alike of the city and the people, that the
rulers, blinded to their own destruction, then concluded--
“themselves sufficiently prepared for the final extirpation of
liberty in this island, and that by deliberate insults they
댓글 없음:
댓글 쓰기