In the March of the year following, after awaiting a response for nearly twelve months, the Livery of the city resolved to draw up a further and more stringent remonstrance; and a meeting was held under the Right Hon. William Beckford, elected lord mayor for the second time, in the interval. In his address “to the Supreme Court of the whole City,” the real dangers which menaced the State were by Beckford traced to their true source, “the comprehensive violation of the right of election”—
“to preserve which right, the Crown had been justly taken from James the Second, and been placed by the people of England on the head of William the Third, and conferred on His Majesty’s family. That the corruption of the people’s representatives was the cause and foundation of all our grievances. That we have now only the name of a parliament, without the substance.”
He observed how improper it was for placemen and pensioners to sit in the House of Commons; “for if a man was not fit to be a Juryman, or a Judge in a cause where he was interested, how much less to be a Senator and justify his peculation.” “He complained of the unequal and inadequate representation of the people, by means of the little, rotten, paltry boroughs.” In the remonstrance drawn up on this occasion, the wrongs of the people were again eloquently urged, and it was especially pointed out that the House of Commons, by the venal majority—
“had deprived the people of their dearest rights. They have done a deed more ruinous in its consequence than the levying of ship-money by Charles the First, or the dispensing power assumed by James the Second. A deed which must vitiate all the future proceedings of this parliament; for the acts of the legislature itself can no more be valid without a legal House of Commons than without a legal prince upon the throne.
“Representatives of the people are essential to the making of laws, and there is a time when it is morally demonstrable that men cease to be representatives. That time is now arrived. The present House of Commons do not represent the people. We owe to your Majesty an obedience under the restriction of the laws, for the calling and duration of Parliaments; and your Majesty owes to us, that our representation, free from the force of arms or corruption, should be preserved to us in them.
“The forms of the Constitution, like those of Religion, were not established for form’s sake, but for the substance. And we call God and man to witness that we do not owe our Liberty to those nice and subtle distinctions, which places, and pensions, and lucrative employments have invented; so neither will we be cheated of it by them, but as it was gained by the stern virtue of our ancestors, by the virtue of their descendants it shall be preserved.
“Since, therefore, the misdeeds of your Majesty’s ministers in violating the freedom of Election, and depraving the noble constitution of Parliaments are notorious, as well as subversive of the fundamental Laws and Liberties of this Realm; and since your Majesty, both in honour and justice, is obliged inviolably to preserve them according to the Oath made to God and your subjects at your Coronation; we, your remonstrants, assure ourselves that your Majesty will restore the constitutional Government and quiet of your people, by DISSOLVING this Parliament, and removing those evil ministers FOR EVER from your councils.”
This manly and righteous remonstrance was presented after many pettifogging slights and indignities, vexations, and subterfuges on the part of the Court and Crown; and there were made various attempts to bring into discredit the authenticity of this document as the expression of the Court of Aldermen. The Corporation of the city, in sixty carriages, proceeded with the various officers to the palace of St. James’s, and were received by the king on his throne. The remonstrance was read; and, in reply, His Majesty read an answer, drawn up in advance, condemning both the former petition and the present remonstrance in unmistakable terms, and ending with an assurance that “he had ever made the law of the land the rule of his conduct, esteeming it his chief glory to rule over a free people;” and then, descending into more palpable falsehoods, asserting, in the face of facts, with a power of dissimulation worthy of Charles II:—
“with this view I have always been careful, as well to execute faithfully the trust reposed in me, as to avoid even the appearance of invading any of those powers which the Constitution has placed in other hands.”
The king was evidently the puppet of more vicious minds, being blessed with but a feeble reasoning faculty of his own. After reading his equivocative answer, and as the lord mayor and the city representatives were withdrawing, the vacuity of his intellect made itself manifest—for it is asserted in contemporaneous accounts, “His Majesty instantly turned round to his courtiers, and burst out laughing. Nero fiddled while Rome was burning.”
The reception accorded to these petitions being far from such as their gravity demanded, fresh agitations commenced in the metropolis and in the provinces, and, on March 30th, Horne Tooke delivered a remarkable address to the freeholders of the county of Middlesex, in which he graphically described both the murders he had seen committed and the conduct of the justices of the peace, who said the ministerial instructions were for the soldiers to fire, and referred to the partiality shown on the trials and the defences made at the expense of Government when it was endeavoured to bring the guilty to justice. At this meeting, “An Address, Remonstrance, and Petition of the Freeholders of Middlesex” was drawn up for presentation, in which it was urged on the king—
“that a secret and malignant influence had thwarted and defeated almost every measure which had been attempted for the benefit of his subjects, and had given rise to measures totally subversive of the Liberties and Constitution of these once flourishing and happy kingdoms.”
“It is not for any light or common grievances that we presume thus repeatedly to interrupt your Majesty’s quiet with our complaints. It is not the illegal oppression of an individual; it is not the partial invasion of our property; it is not the violation of any single law of which we complain, but it is a violation which at one stroke deprives us of the only constitutional security of our Fortunes, Liberties, and Lives.
“Your Majesty’s servants have attacked our Liberties in the most vital part; they have torn away the heart-strings of the Constitution, and have made those men our destruction, whom the laws have appointed as the immediate guardians of our Rights and Liberties.
“The House of Commons, by their determination at the last election for this county, have assumed a power to overrule at pleasure the fundamental Right of Election, which the Constitution has placed in other hands, those of their Constituents, and from whence alone their whole authority is derived; a power by which the law of the land is at once overturned and resolved into the will and pleasure of a majority of one House of Parliament. And if this pretended power is exercised to the full extent of the principles, that House can no longer be a Representative of the people, but a separate body, altogether independent of them, self-existing, and self-elected.
“These proceedings have totally destroyed the confidence of your Majesty’s subjects in one essential branch of the legislative power, and if that branch is chosen in a manner not agreeable to the laws and constitution of the kingdom, the authority of Parliament itself must suffer extremely, if not totally perish.”
The remonstrance from which the above paragraphs are extracted was, together with a petition from the county of Kent, presented to His Majesty at St. James’s; both being received and handed to the lord of the bedchamber in waiting; but no answer was returned.