"We, the Deputies of the States of Utrecht, make known, that as it is come to our knowledge, that, notwithstanding the strong and serious advertisements and publications against the composition, sale, and distribution of lampoons, scandalous pamphlets, or libels, and defamatory writings of whatever sort, or in whatever form they may be, to the prejudice of the high sovereignty of these Provinces, and of those who are placed in any administration or direction of public affairs already, heretofore, and lately promulgated, both by the Lords, the States of this Province, and by others, and the rigorous penalty therein decreed against transgressors; nevertheless, the spirit of discord, of wickedness, of calumny, and of sedition has burst forth, and spread itself in this State so far, that it has not been possible, hitherto to restrain it by such advertisements, but, on the contrary, it has arrived at such a height, that there has been printed and dispersed within a few days a most pernicious libel, under the title of Aan het Volkvan Nederland, (to the people of the Low Countries) containing a great number of wicked and slanderous imputations against the Most Serene Person of his Most Serene Highness, our Lord, the Prince of Orange and Nassau, Hereditary Stadtholder, Captain and Admiral-General of these Provinces, against his Most Serene father and mother of glorious memory, as also our Lords, the Princes of Orange, William the First, Maurice, Frederick, Henry, William the Second, and William the Third, illustrious predecessors of his Most Serene Highness, and interspersing efforts the most seditious, tending to overturn not only the present form of the Regency, but even to introduce, instead of the Regency in the State, which also is therein painted, in the most hateful manner, a democracy, or Regency of the people, and thus to cause the Republic to fall into an entire anarchy, which would increase and multiply still more extremely, the dangers to which the dear country is exposed at present by a foreign war, joined to an intestine division; and taking into consideration that such most detestable wickedness, if not restrained, can have no other consequences, than the total ruin and destruction of the dear country, if God by his grace does not prevent it, and that it is incumbent on us to employ all the means possible to hinder it, and to punish offences according to their demerit; for these causes, we renew that which has been heretofore and lately ordained in this respect by the publication of their Noble Mightinesses, of the 4th of July of the present year, 1781, and not only the punishments by fine, but also of discretionary correction, according to the exigence of the case against the transgressors there mentioned, to discover the author or the authors, and the distributor or the distributors of such a dangerous libel as that before mentioned, and to the end that they be punished, as examples to