Parliament had not sat many days before the Common Council and the livery presented strongly-worded petitions to both Houses for Reform. The Common Council pointed out--as an example of one of the most glaring anomalies--that Cornwall alone returned more borough members than fifteen other counties together including Middlesex, and more than eleven counties even including county members,[735] whilst the livery referred all the evils which the country was suffering--"the prodigious amount of the National Debt, the enormous and unconstitutional military establishments, the profusion of sinecure places and pensions, and a long course of lavish expenditure of the public money"--to one source, viz., "the corrupt, dependent, and inadequate representation of the people in Parliament." They disclaimed all wild and visionary plans of Reform. All they desired was "to see the House of Commons in conformity with pure constitutional principles, a fair and honest organ of the public voice exercising a controuling power over the servants of the Crown, and not an instrument in their hands to oppress the people."[736] [Sidenote: Repressive measures of the Government, March, 1817.] It was to no purpose. The outrage on the Regent frightened the ministers, and instead of following the advice offered by the City and appeasing the public by showing a willingness to correct abuses, they proceeded to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act and to pursue a cruel system of repression, which only served to increase the evil.[737] [Sidenote: The trial of Hone, the bookseller, Dec., 1817.] Not only were seditious actions proceeded against but seditious writings. A quiet and inoffensive bookseller of Old Bailey, named Hone, was prosecuted on three several charges for which he was put on trial three several days. The charges were professedly for having published pamphlets of a blasphemous character, but the persistency with which they were pressed after a first and second acquittal, sufficiently showed that the prosecution had been undertaken from political and not from any religious motives, and the City did not hesitate to tell Parliament as much.[738] They declared that they had viewed with indignation and horror the vindictive cruelty with which ministers had exercised their power since the suspension of the Act. Numerous individuals (they said) had been torn from their wives and families, dragged to distant prisons and kept in irons, and afterwards released without being brought to trial, or even knowing the nature of the charges against them. The country had been flooded with spies and informers in the pay of the government, and these inhuman wretches had endeavoured to excite simple and deluded men into acts of outrage and treason. The petitioners did not disguise their belief that "the groundless alarms excited by ministers were solely for the purpose of stifling complaints and protecting abuses." [Sidenote: The Indemnity Bill, 13 March, 1818.]