Norfolk Gazette And Publick Ledger

London, May 14. COMMON HALL. To the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in Parliament assembled. The humble Address, Remonstrance, and Petition of the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Livery of the city of London, in Common Hall assembled, this 4th day of May, 1810.

"We, the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Livery of the city of London, in Common Hall assembled, beg leave, with feelings of the most anxious concern, to present this, our humble address, petition, and remonstrance, and we earnestly entreat your honourable house to give it a favourable reception. For how can we hope for redress and relief, if the bare statement of the wrongs and grievances of which we complain, be rejected? We also beg your honourable house to believe, that, in the language we may have occasion, and are, indeed, compelled to employ, no offence is intended to your honourable house."

The circumstance which most deeply afflicts us, and which most strongly impels us at this time to approach your honourable house, is, what appears to us to have been on your part, a violation of the personal security of the people of the land. We humbly conceive, that without a hearing you have condemned them. Law requires legal process and trial by jury of our equals; justice demands that no person shall be prosecutor, juror, judge, and executioner in his own cause. We beg leave to express our conviction-that this eternal principle of immutable justice cannot be annulled by any house of commons-by any King-by any Parliament. The assertion of this jurisdiction is unfounded, and we beg you but firmly declare our opinion against this pretence of this power in any hands or jurisdiction unknown, a power above the law, and which could be enforced only by summary violence made manifest by the breaking open an Englishman's castle, and by the preceding and subsequent murder of peaceable and unoffending citizens.

"Permit us humbly to observe, that the construction of your honourable house prevents our surprize at this conduct of your honourable house. We will not enter into details, so often and so ably stated to your honourable house, by which it appears, that upwards of three hundred members of your honourable house, in England and Wales only, are not elected by the people, in any honest sense of the word People, but are sent to your honourable house by the absolute nomination or powerful influence of about one hundred and fifty Peers and others, as averred in a petition to your honourable house in the year 1780, and which remains on your journals uncontroverted. This is the great constitutional disease of our country. This is the true root of all evils, corruptions and oppressions under which we labour. If it be not eradicated, the nation must perish."

In support of this our sincere conviction, we need only refer to the never to be forgotten vote of your honourable house, refusing to examine evidence on a charge against lord Castlereagh and Mr. S. Perceval, then two of the king's ministers, for trafficking in seats in your honourable house.

"We remember well, that when it was gravely averred, and proof offered in a petition which stands on your journals, and the complaints whereof are now unredressed for more than twenty years,

"That seats for legislation in the house of commons were as notoriously rented and bought as the standings or cattle at a fair." the then honourable house treated the assertion with affected indignation, and the ministers threatened to punish the petitioner for presenting a "scandalous and libellous petition." But we have lived to see a house of commons avow the traffic, and screen those accused of this breach of law and right, because it has been equally committed by all parties, and was a practice "as notorious as the sun at noon day."- At this vote, and at these practices, we feel as "our ancestors would have felt," and cannot repress the expression of "our indignation" and disgust.

"Under these circumstances, may we not be permitted to ask, where is your justice, where your dignity? Mr. John Gale Jones is confined within the walls of Newgate for an alleged offence against yourselves, which, if committed against any other subjects of these realms, or even against the king himself, must have been judged by the established rules and laws of the land! Lord Castlereagh continued to be a principal minister of the crown, and is now a member of your honourable house! Sir Francis Burdett, dragged by a military force from the bosom of his family, is committed to the Tower for exercising the right of constitutional discussion, common and indeed undeniable to you, to us, to all. Mr. Spencer Perceval continues a member of your honourable house, taking a lead in your deliberations, the first minister of the crown, and the chief adviser of the royal councils!

"Under the agonizing feeling excited by the late imprisonment of our fellow subjects, can it be necessary for us to recapitulate the many instances, as thus appear to us, of refusals to institute just and necessary inquiry, to pursue to condign punishment public delinquents and peculators, to economize the means and resources of the state, to administer to the people relief and redress for the various disgraces which the national honour has sustained, for the lavish profusion of British blood and treasure extravagantly wasted in ill-contrived and fruitless campaigns, and more particularly in the humiliating and ignominious expedition to the coast of Holland, in which the greatest armament that ever left our shores was exposed to the scorn, contempt and ridicule of the enemy; the flower of our youth wastefully and wantonly left ingloriously to perish in the pestilential marshes of Walcheren, without succour, without necessity, without object, without hope?

"These and similar proceedings of your honourable house require no comment, but we cannot by our silence become accomplices in the ruin of our country, and dare not conceal from you the wholesome though unpleasant truth that they appear to us to have materially shaken what remained of the confidence of the subjects of these realms in the wisdom of your honourable house.

"We therefore humbly, but firmly entreat you to reconsider your conduct, to retrace your steps, and to expunge from your journals all your orders, declarations, and resolutions, respecting Mr. Gale Jones and Sir Francis Burdett and that as Sir Francis Burdett has not been expelled from your honourable house, be he no longer prevented from exercising therein all the duties of a member of the same.

"Above all, we earnestly pray your honourable house, in conjunction with Sir Francis Burdett and in conformity to the notice he had given, to devise and adopt such measures as will effect an immediate and radical reform in the commons house of parliament, and ensure to the people, a full, fair and substantial representation, without which they must inevitably cease to exist as a great, a free, glorious, and independent nation."

The petition was adopted unanimously, with the exception of the votes of Mr. deputy Kemble, Mr S. Dixon, and another.