Most Gracious Sovereign,
Such are the grievances and apprehensions which have long discontented and disturbed the greatest and best part of your Majesty’s loyal subjects. Unwilling, however, to interrupt your royal repose, though ready to lay down our lives and fortunes for your Majesty’s service, and for the constitution as by law established, we have waited patiently, expecting a constitutional remedy by the means of our own representatives, but our legal and free choice having been repeatedly rejected, and the right of election now finally taken from us by the unprecedented seating of a candidate who was never chosen by the county, and who, even to become a candidate, was obliged fraudulently to vacate his seat in parliament, under the pretence of an insignificant place, invited thereto by the prior declaration of a minister, that whoever opposed our choice, though but with four votes, should be declared member for the county. We see ourselves, by this last act, deprived even of the franchises of Englishmen, reduced to the most abject state of slavery, and left without hopes or means of redress but from your Majesty or God.
Deign then, most gracious Sovereign, to listen to the prayer of the most faithful of your Majesty’s subjects; and to banish from your royal favour, trust, and confidence, for ever, those evil and pernicious counsellors who have endeavoured to alienate the affection of your Majesty’s most sincere and dutiful subjects, and whose suggestions tend to deprive your people of their dearest and most essential rights, and who have traitorously dared to depart from the spirit and letter of those laws which have secured the crown of these realms to the House of Brunswick, in which we make our most earnest prayers to God that it may continue untarnished to the latest posterity.
Signed by 1565 Freeholders.
THE CITY OF LONDON AND THE EARL OF CHATHAM ON PARLIAMENTARY REFORM (1770).
Source.—Letters of Junius. London: G. Bell and Sons. 1910. Vol. i.
At a Common Council holden on the 14th of May, 1770, it was resolved: “That the grateful thanks of this court be presented to the Right Hon. William Earl of Chatham, for the zeal he has shown in support of those most valuable and sacred privileges, the right of election, and the right of petition; and for his wishes and declaration, that his endeavours shall hereafter be used that parliaments may be restored to their original purity, by shortening their duration, and introducing a more full and equal representation, an act which will render his name more honoured by posterity than the memorable successes of the glorious war he conducted.”
To this vote of thanks the Earl of Chatham made the following reply to the committee deputed to present it to his Lordship:
Gentlemen,