It is the height of political wisdom to know when to refuse, and when to concede popular claims. To refuse just claims is equally wicked and unwise; it is not only an act of injustice, as debarring the people from their rights, but it destroys confidence and respect—it produces fierce discontent, exasperation, and vindictiveness towards their rulers; and, in the end, if the claimants be powerful, that is extorted as a right which was first asked as a boon. To concede unfounded claims is equally weak and unwise; it stimulates the eager and grasping spirit of demand, it rarely conciliates for the time, but never satisfies; it causes that unsettled expecting and excited state of the public mind so unfavourable to national contentment, happiness, and prosperity; and if the system be long continued—and every new concession, by weakening the strength of the yielding party, will make it more difficult to change the system—security after security, privilege after privilege having been surrendered, the petitioners will become the framers of the laws—the claimants, the dispensers of privileges—the governed, the governing power in the kingdom. At the awful crisis at which we have arrived it is the bounden duty of all men to forget party distinctions, to divest themselves of party spirit, to have no object in view but the honour of God and the general good. Let, therefore, the claims of the people be dispassionately and impartially weighed; not, however, abstractedly, but with relation to the general good; and let these claims be conceded so far as they may be granted consistently with the rights of property, the integrity of the constitution, the interests of religion, and the welfare of the empire. And having made every concession which justice demands, and which the real interests not only of the claimants, but of society at large, sanction, let the whole energies of government and the nation be directed to crushing the seditious and blasphemous associations which are actively employed in exciting discontent and insubordination, and in corrupting the principles of our agricultural and manufacturing population; and let every means be employed to calm the agitation of the public mind—to restore it to that peaceful, healthful, and contented state, which once so much distinguished the people of England.