At length matters looked so serious that the livery of London met in Common Hall on the 5th April and drew up a respectful but solemn warning to the king himself against the fatal policy pursued by his ministers towards America. The measures which the government had recently adopted were declared to be "big with all consequences which can alarm a free and commercial people." They inflicted (said the livery) a deep and perhaps fatal wound to commerce; they ruined manufactures; they reduced the revenue and increased the taxes; and they alienated the colonists. Here, as ever, commercial interests were placed by the citizens in the foreground. But commercial interests did not form the sole motive for this remonstrance. The City's own liberties were at stake if the liberties of the subject in any part of the kingdom were infringed;--"Your petitioners conceive the liberties of the whole to be inevitably connected with those of every part of an empire, founded on the common rights of mankind. They cannot, therefore, observe without the greatest concern and alarm the constitution fundamentally violated in any part of your majesty's dominions. They esteem it an essential, unalterable principle of liberty, the source and security of all constitutional rights that no part of the dominion can be taxed without being represented."[387] The livery resolved that this address or remonstrance should be presented by the lord mayor, the city members, the Court of Aldermen (_not_ the Common Council) and the sheriffs, and that they themselves should also attend the presentation in a body (and not by deputation, as in 1771 and 1773). Having settled this business, they next proceeded to pass votes of thanks to the Lords and Commons who had opposed "the impolitic and inhuman Bill for prohibiting the people of New England from the Newfoundland fishery, and for their opposition to other arbitrary, cruel and anti-commercial measures" against their fellow subjects in America. They also thanked Chatham and Burke for the plan they had proposed for conciliating the American colonies; and lastly, they passed a vote of thanks to such of the Commons as had recently voted on Wilkes's oft repeated motion for expunging the resolutions of the late Parliament respecting Wilkes and the Middlesex election.[388] [Sidenote: The King's reply, 10 April, 1775.]