qualifying measure would not be accepted, it remains for you to decide
whether you will, at any hazard, support a set of men who have reduced
you to this unhappy dilemma, or whether you will gratify the united
wishes of the whole people of England by dissolving the Parliament.
Taking it for granted, as I do very sincerely, that you have personally
no design against the constitution, nor any view inconsistent with the
good of your subjects, I think you cannot hesitate long upon the choice
which it equally concerns your interests and your honour to adopt. On
one side you hazard the affection of all your English subjects, you
relinquish every hope of repose to yourself, and you endanger the
establishment of your family for ever. All this you venture for no
object whatsoever, or for such an object as it would be an affront to
you to name. Men of sense will examine your conduct with suspicion,
while those who are incapable of comprehending to what degree they are
injured afflict you with clamours equally insolent and unmeaning.
Supposing it possible that no fatal struggle should ensue, you
determine at once to be unhappy, without the hope of a compensation
either from interest or ambition. If an English king be hated or
despised, he _must_ be unhappy; and this, perhaps, is the only
political truth which he ought to be convinced of without experiment.
But if the English people should no longer confine their resentment to
a submissive representation of their wrongs; if, following the glorious
example of their ancestors, they should no longer appeal to the
creature of the constitution, but to that high Being who gave them the
rights of humanity, whose gifts it were sacrilege to surrender, let me
ask you, Sir, upon what part of your subjects would you rely for
assistance?
The people of Ireland have been uniformly plundered and oppressed. In
return they give you every day fresh marks of their resentment. They
despise the miserable governor you have sent them, because he is the
creature of Lord Bute, nor is it from any natural confusion in their
ideas that they are so ready to confound the original of a king with
the disgraceful representation of him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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