Revenues raised for the public good, have been converted to the public ruin; by being fquandered away in corruption, or funk into the pockets of fraud and avarice, and left unaccounted

for.

Public offices and dignities, which ought to be the rewards of the best men of the greateft abilities, have been conferred on the worst of the meaneft parts and capacities.

Though your Majefty and family are eminent for virtue and piety, your fervants and minifters are examplary for vice and prophaneness, and defpifers of all decorum.

Electors to parliament have been debauched with public money and petty offices; and a corrupt and anticonftitutional legiflature formed by violence and garbling; which ipfo facto, fome think, renders its acts null and void.

Such conduct fubverts the conftitution, by blending and confounding together the legislative and executive powers, which ought to be independant.

Thus whilft your Majefty has been made to believe, that you hear the fentiments of your freeholders from a majority in parliament, you are only deluded by the voice of corruption.

By wicked counsellors, your Majefty's dutiful, loyal and loving fubjects have been reprefented as licentious, factious and feditious rebels; because the laft will not quietly fubmit to betyrannized over, and plundered by the firft. And hence the bond of union and confidence between the King and his people is dif folved, and jealousies and fufpicions have feized both.

Our conftitution has been libelled by the wicked tools of wicked minifters, and far-chamber maxims, and arbitrary doctrines taught, and averred to be the law of the land. And by law quibbles and refinements, the courts have been difgraced, the laws explained away, and the people moft miferably oppreffed.

The detection of minifterial fraud, falfhoods, treachery and rapacity has been treated with all the malice and cruelty due to ftate crimes and delinquency, which ought to have been rewarded as meritorious patriotifm.

Our commerce and agriculture have been injured, wounded, and facrificed, in capital branches, by ridiculous minifterial blunders, fhameful neglects, and fcandalous treacheries.

Revenue-laws are hung up, as rods of iron, over the heads of the refractory and difobedient to arbitrary and unconstitutional commands, and are anulled in favour of the fupple tools of wicked adminiftration. Hence the boards of finances are become the greatest gangs of smugglers in the kingdom; the revenue offices a fund of corruption, and oppreffion, and literally a finking fund of the revenues to a great degree.

The toleration laws, and thofe against récufants have been threatened to terrify both parties iuto a concurrence with, and fupport of minifterial defpotism.

The

The liberty of the prefs has been indirectly reftrained by cruel prosecutions: and by the establishment of that doctrine, which is a fcandal to humanity, viz. that " The more true the greater the libel;" a maxim firft coined in the most defpotic governments and adopted in this kingdom formerly only in the moft wicked reigns.

Perjuries have been encouraged by minifters, to screen state. offenders; and murders prompted to revenge their affronts.

All the grievances, all the crying fins, and abominations, all the delinquencies and plunders of adminiftration, we have recapitulated to your Majefty, are but a part of its guilt; all and more are too notorious to require fpecification to the world; too numerous to admit of detail; too public to need proof; too cruel to be paffed over in filence; too dangerous to be fuffered, too alarming to be continued, and too heinous to pafs unpunished.

in fhort, there is fcarce a right or privilege, that we are entitled to, by our free conftitution, that has efcaped ministerial violence, and been left uninfringed by defpotifm. Thofe parts of adminiftration, which ought to have been preserved in vestal pu rity, have by wicked minifters, been rendered as venal, corrupt, debauched, and prostitute as the public Stews; and this. with the most impious views; namely, the eftablishing an arbitrary and defpotic government.

The mifchiefs arifing from fuch arbitrary schemes, and ridiculous and wicked practices, and plans of adminiftration, have not only oppreffed your petitioners and their fellow citizens in this kingdom, but they have likewife extended their baleful influence to your Majefty's colonies.

For a more ample detail of our grievances and afflictions, we beg leave to refer your royal attention to the petition of the freeholders of the county of Middlesex to your Majefty, which expreffes our fentiments more particularly; we having studied brevity here, as far as poffible without fuppreffing our most pungent griefs.

Upon thefe accounts with hearts full of forrow, we most humbly implore your Majefty, to take our moft wretched fituation, into confideration; and to banish from your royal prefence and councils for ever, thofe wicked counsellors, who have occafioned our forrows, and these complaints; in order that the execution of the laws may be restored to its purity, elections to their freedom, your people to their rights, the ftate to its glory, commerce to profperity, and your Majefty to tranquility of mind, and the renown of your ancestors.

By fuch conduct your Majefty will give us reason to thank God, that our ancestors conferred the imperial crown of these realms on the house of Hanover; as at the fame time they beftowed a bleffing on us and our pofterity, by making choice of. a race of grateful Heroes, whofe ambition it is to return the obligation, by exerting all their powers in maintaining those liberties and privileges, they were elected to preferve and defend.

That

That your Majefty's reign may be long and glorious,' over an affectionate, loyal and dutiful people; and that your crown, dignity and glory may defcend, with the higheft fplendor, to your pofterity, and continue in your royal family as long as Sun and Moon fhall endure, we most fervently pray; and to obtain This with the preservation of our liberties, we are ready to facrifice our lives and fortunes, and all that is dear to us. That we may never want defenders of our conftitution, in your Majesty's royal house and pofterity, is the warmest wish and most paffionate defire of 6000 Freeholders of the

COUNTY of WILTS.

Put away evil counsellors from before the throne, and it fhall be established in righteousness.

For the POLITICAL REGISTER.

An Enquiry whether the Principles of Hobbs are not adopted by the prefent Adminiftration.

66

N the Leviathan of Thomas Hobbs, of Malmsbury, printed in 1651, I find this fhocking dogma, Though fovereigns are all fubject to the laws of nature, yet they are not fubject to civil laws, becaufe fuch fubjection fets the laws above the fovereign, fetteth alfo a judge above him, and a power to punish him, which is to make a fecond fovereign." That the reasoning as well as the maxim it is founded on are deteftable, and resolve all good government into the will of one man, will appear to every well informed mind; fince no enthroned prince appointed to conduct a fyftem of civil government, can have any just right to the exercise of fovereign power, but by the rules and laws agreed upon by the people whom he governs. And to fuppofe him under no restraint from the civil laws of that political fyftem, is to acknowledge that he is not a civil magiftrate in the administration of government, but a contemner of that very fyftem of law, by which he ought always to be guided. Confider him as fitting paramount to obligation, and above the reach of the law, and it will be found that a king is a character wholly feparate from the people he affects to govern. Abfolute power in a fovereign, is an abfolute negative on public good, which is the fole end of government. A defpotic prince does not look upon himself as having any fellowship or community with the body politic of the ftate over which he prefides, he can therefore have no natural fympathy or feeling for the miseries of individuals, or be in the leaft moved with the complaints of even a majority of his fubjects.

A certain token that a prince inclines towards this principle of unbridled ambition, is when he suffers the morals of his people to be debauched, and their religion depraved and corrupted.That this is the cafe at prefent in Great Britain, no man in his fenfes will deny. Men can have no notion of what is right, just

and

and good, where the fupreme power is wantonly exercifed according to caprice and humour; where a liberty is taken to dispense with equity and juftice at pleasure, and even to change the very ftandard of moral rectitude. If the fovereign tramples on the . established laws of the ftate he fhould govern according to those laws; can he wonder that a spirited people, whofe manners perhaps border too much upon ferocity, fhould imitate his example, and disturb the tranquility of his reign by tumults, mobs, riots, and other disorderly acts. They know he can derive no authority from God or man, to ftep out of the line of the common law of the land, and therefore if they fee him ufurp a difpenfing power that does not belong to him, they from that moment confider all the fyftem of civil government as diffolved, and themselves dif charged from all ties of allegiance or loyalty.

But as a plea for defpotifm in a monarch, Hobbs tells us, "that in these western parts of the world, we are made to receive our opinions concerning the inftitution and rights of commonwealths from Ariftotle, Cicero, and other men, Greeks and Romans that living under popular states, derived those rights not from the principles of nature, but from commonwealths; and because the Athenians were taught that they were freemen, and all that lived under monarchy were flaves; therefore Ariftotle fays, In democracy liberty is to be fuppofed; for it is commonly held, that no man is free in any other government, and so argues Cicero and other writers; he adds, that by reading these Greek and Latin authors, men from their childhood have gotten an habit, under a falfe fhew of liberty, of favouring tumult, and of licentiously controuling the actions of their fovereigns, and again of controuling thofe controulers with the effufion of much blood." This is exactly the cant of minifterial hirelings now; on the principles of Hobbs, Dr. Samuel Johnson has lately published his fentiments in favour of a tame fubmiffion to the will and pleafure . of the fovereign and his minifters. And two or three Scotch writers have attempted to reafon us out of the ftudy of Greek and Latin, because the great authors mentioned by Hobbs, infpire the foul with a manly love of civil freedom, and an abhorrence of defpotic rule. They would have us believe, that the knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages are not neceffary parts of modern education; but the plain truth is, that the honeft generous principles of the ancient Greek and Roman writers, will not by any means apply to the prefent times, but by way of reproach to the fhameful fyftem of arbitrary government, which is daily fapping the foundation of that liberty, which it has been the labour of ages to establish in this country.

The remarks which Lord Shaftsbury makes on Hobbs, may with very little variation be applied to all thofe prostituted authors, who want to banish Greek and Latin from our public fchools. "The panic," fays his lordship, " had fo feized our witty philofopher, from the people having rid themselves of a tyrant in 1648, that it gave him fuch an abhorrence of all po

pular

pular government, and of every notion of liberty itself, that to extinguish it for ever, he recommends the very extinguishing of letters, and exhorts princes not to fpare fo much as an ancient Roman or Greek hiftorian." The earl of Bute and his agents have undertaken to carry this recommendation of Hobbs into execution. They began in Scotland, by propofing that no more lectures fhould be read in Greek or Latin at any of the univerfities in that country. The experiment failed through the public fpirit of fome of the profeffors and ftudents, who opposed it. But not difcouraged by this, the fame party have made a fresh trial in England, under the name of James Buchanan, who has juft publifhed a plan of an English grammar-school education, according to which the British youth, by the English language alone, without the embarraffment of Greek and Latin, may be thoroughly accomplished in every part of afeful and polite literature, and qualified to make a more early, advantageous, and elegant figure in life. We give Mr. Buchanan credit for his plan, as being extremely proper to fit British youth for employments under corrupt adminiftrations, and defpotic princes; and to banish every idea of that noble fpirit of liberty which the Greek and Roman writers inculcate, and in fupport of which, they taught_that_life itself was to be parted with chearfully. The hiftories of modern times, Mr. Buchanan and his employers well know, will not furnish fuch bright examples of genuine patriotifm, nor is it wished they should, for patriotifm is held in contempt by modern rulers, whofe aim it is totally to eradicate it from this land; the talk is half accomplished at prefent, and nothing is wanting to complete the fyftem, but the reducing the next generation to that ftate of barbarism which will render them abject flaves; and no better expedient could be fuggefted for this purpofe, than to abolish the study of ancient learning, and with it ancient history of courfe.

There is another proof given by Hobbs of his depraved notion of the civil liberty of fubjects, which feems analogous to the fpirit of the prefent times, and the conduct of our worthy minifters. He fays, that the civil liberty of fubjects depends on the filence of the law: in cafes where the fovereign has prefcribed no rule, there the subject hath the liberty to do or forbear, according to his own difcretion; and therefore fuch liberty is in fome places more, and in fome lefs, and in fome times more, in others lefs; and as they that have the fovereignty fhall think most convenient." Exactly agreeable to this notion has been the fyfem of all Lord Bute's adminiftration. If the fovereign or his miniftry do not fee it quite fo convenient to allow the fubjects the fame liberty they formerly enjoyed, it is immediately curtailed, and our portion of civil freedom at this time depends fo ftrictly on the filence of the law, that it is diminished in any refpect by the will of the King or his miniftry, which not only makes the laws break filence, but fpeak any language they think proper. And by managing a majority in both houfes of parliament, admiVOL. VI.

T t

nistration