The National Intelligencer And Washington Advertiser

ANSPACH, Jan. 21.
PETITION OF THE CITIZENS OF ANSPACH TO THE KING OF PRUSSIA.

May it please your Majesty:

The citizens and inhabitants of Anspach draw near the exalted throne of your majesty, with bleeding hearts, in the name of the country so happy under your majesty's administration. We hear on every side the report, that the venerable and holy bond, which during a century has connected the honest inhabitants of Anspach and Bayreuth with the sovereign of Brandenburg, is to be violently broken; that this ancient royal inheritance, this cradle of the Prussian monarchy, is to be torn from the states of its sovereign, and made subject to a foreign sceptre. The idea of a magistracy conferred by God, and the consequent sentiments of loyalty, devotion and love on the part of the subjects, are the surest foundation of every constitution. Happily for mankind, these sentiments cannot be changed like a garment, more especially when they have been inherited during successive ages from father to son, and fit for the same race of sovereigns. Happily for mankind, the upright servant who is not content with eye-service, and who is proud of submitting to an honorable government, cannot feel a more painful and degrading thought, than that of being compelled to exchange a master to whose service he was born, and whom he loves and venerates.

These considerations, bold in their expression, but founded in the nature of things, will not fail powerfully to impress your majesty's feeling bosom; may they, and may your noble sense of truth and justice decide the fate of this our most humble petition, and the felicity of your Franconian territory! Half a million of men, who have inhabited those states, and who have lived joyfully and happily under your majesty's government, implore your majesty, as children addressing their parent, not to abandon them; but to continue as before, with like benignity and justice, to watch over the constitution entrusted to you, and graciously to turn aside the evil of an exchange.

Proud from the consciousness of belonging to the throne of your majesty, though removed at a distance from it, and connected with your majesty, as well by the service of ages, as by unshaken fidelity, we are ready (if necessary) to secure our delivery from this evil, by every sacrifice, even of our property and lives. We are farther animated by the consolatory conviction, that we belong to a wise and just king, who not only holds it to be greater and more honorable to secure to his states the blessings of peace than to acquire splendor by the vain acquisition of conquest: but over whose exalted and just mind the enticements of mere convenience and rapacious policy, and the advantages of an increased population, will avail nothing against the interests of his ancient and faithful subjects and that our sovereign, thus wise and good, is, for our preservation and the felicity of the world, endowed by Providence with the power of giving effect to his will, and of maintaining the dignity of his crown, not suffering it to be prescribed to him over what people his sceptre is to govern.

With the deepest devotion, &c.