“Most Gracious Sovereign—Will your Majesty be pleased so far to condescend as to permit the Mayor of your loyal City of London to declare in your Royal presence, on behalf of his fellow-citizens, how much the bare apprehension of your Majesty’s displeasure would at all times affect their minds. The declaration of that displeasure has already filled them with inexpressible anxiety, and with the deepest affliction.
“Permit me, Sire, to assure your Majesty that your Majesty has not in all your dominions any subjects more faithful, more dutiful, or more affectionate to your Majesty’s person and family, or more ready to sacrifice their lives and fortunes in the maintenance of the true honour and dignity of your Crown.
“We do, therefore, with the greatest humility and submission, most earnestly supplicate your Majesty, that you will not dismiss us from your presence without expressing a more favourable opinion of your faithful citizens, and without some comfort, without some prospect at least of redress.
“Permit me, Sire, further to observe, that whoever has already dared, or shall hereafter endeavour by false insinuations and suggestions, to alienate your Majesty’s affections from your loyal subjects in general and from the city of London in particular, and to withdraw your confidence in and regard for your people, is an enemy to your Majesty’s person and family, a violator of the public peace, and a betrayer of our happy Constitution, as it was established at the glorious revolution of 1688.”
At the conclusion of these expressions of enlightenment for the royal mind, the lord mayor waited more than a minute for a reply of “some more favourable opinion,” but none was given.
“On this occasion,” says the satirist, “Nero did not fiddle while Rome was burning.” The humility and serious firmness with which the dignified Beckford—who enjoyed the friendship of the great Earl of Chatham, and with whom he had many points in common—uttered these words, “filled the whole Court with admiration and confusion;” for they found very different countenances amongst the citizens than they expected from Lord Pomfret’s description, who declared in the House of Lords—
“that, however swaggering and impudent the behaviour of the low citizens might be on their own dunghill, when they came into the royal presence, their heads hung down like bulrushes, and they blinked with their eyes like owls in the sunshine of the sun.”
On the 19th of May, the king prorogued that parliament which, by approving addresses from both Houses, had fortified the royal censure returned to the popular remonstrances. “The prevalence of animosities and of dissensions among their fellow-subjects” was specially alluded to in his Majesty’s speech, while the conduct of both branches of his legislature received in return such flattering encomiums as their servile pliability had earned by despicable means:—
“The temper with which you have conducted all your proceedings has given me great satisfaction, and I promise myself the happiest effects from the firmness, as well as the moderation, which you have manifested in the very critical circumstances which have attended your late deliberations.”
However undignified the reception accorded at the time to these petitions addressed to the throne from its truest supporters, the good cause eventually triumphed, in defiance of the chicanery of counter-expressions of servility, fabricated at the instance of those whose prospects depended on the continuance in power of false politicians, despising alike the voice and interests of the people, and resting their reliance on the venality of their adherents, and the base instinct of self-aggrandisement at the expense of the state existent in minds equally mercenary with their own.
“Eventually the citizens succeeded, in spite of the united efforts of the Court, the Ministers, and the Parliament; and their cause has since been solemnly and universally recognized as that of the Constitution and of liberty. It is impossible to appreciate too highly the national importance of the conduct they pursued.”
It was well said by “Junius,” the integrity of whose sentiments bears more than a casual resemblance to the utterances of that patriotic statesman, Lord Chatham, with whose fame the authorship of Junius’s “Letters” may one day be identified:—
“The noble spirit of the metropolis is the life-blood of the state, collected at the heart; from that point it circulates with health and vigour through every artery of the Constitution.”