No. 16. Vol. I.] LONDON, FRIDAY, Dec. 10, 1819. [PRICE. 2D.

A LETTER TO LORD CASTLEREAGH,

On the Bill which he has brought into the House of Commons to annihilate the Liberty of the Press.

MY LORD,

You have brought into the House one of the strangest, most unconstitutional bills that has ever been read there. You have openly and wantonly attacked the liberties of your country; you have dared to propose transportation as the punishment of what you, and two or three despots, are pleased to call Libels, and you seem to hope that you will be allowed to do so with impunity! Heaven grant that you may be disappointed. If your bill pass, I do not hesitate to say, that this kingdom, once the proudest monument of liberty, will be changed into a dreary dungeon of despotism! You attempt to tear up by the root, the fairest, most beautiful plant that the hand of Liberty ever fostered -you attempt to poison the purest fountain which God and Nature have opened to the human race-and you do all' this under pretence of securing the freedom of the English Nation! Immortal God! what mask will not a hypocrite wear! "If the present state of things continue," you say, "it will be impossible for the country long to resist the mass of crime and seductive reasoning issued from the press." My Lord! you mistake the matter-the sentence ought to run thus:-"if the present distresses of the country be not in some measure alleviated, if the grievances of which the nation complains so loudly, be not speedily redressed, if Britons, while sinking under the weight of

Printed and Published by T. Davison, 10, Duke-street, Smithfield.

taxation, be not allowed to say that the burden is greater than they are able to bear, it will be impossible for the People long to resist the evidence so forcibly conveyed to the heart by every sense and every feeling of man!" But you tell us that you only mean to apply your sage observations to treasonable and blasphemous publications--a most excellent doctrine, indeed, my Lord. What a blessing to the country, that so pious and honest a man has slipped into the ministry but will you allow me to comment, aud paraphrase a little on this lovely text of yours; which means, you will candidly confess the truth, that you only intend to apply your observations to those pamphlets, in which your conduct and the conduct of your fellow-labourers in your Lord's vineyard, has been discussed with a freedom and familiarity that has stung your conscience (if you have one), and offended your aristocratical pride (of which you have certainly a good share). My gracious, and most learned Lord, I hope this does not look like a libel-if it does, what an excellent opportunity of revenge it will afford your Lordship.

if

But to the point-Your colleague, Lord Sidmouth, has acknowledged, (for who can deny it?) that much danger exists; you, and all the rest of the ministry, know it to be true; and yet you go on proposing violent measures, and bringing bills into the House which are a libel upon human nature. What, in the name of heaven, has inspired you with this desperate frenzy? What demon has impelled you to throw down the gauntlet, and bid defiance to the good sense of the English People? Your impudence in reading such a Bill in an English House of Commons, calls to my memory the effrontery of Catiline, who dared to appear in the Roman Senate House after his nefarious design had been in part discovered. And, my Lord, I would remind you of the fate of Catiline, and of the convulsions which his death gave birth to. The fine statue of Liberty, whose likeness is engraven on every Briton's heart, which our ve nerable ancestors imagined they were consecrating to eter

nity, which has been adorned and admired by the great and the wise of every age, around whose base patriots and heroes have rallied, and fought, and bled; which nations have envied, and despots opposed in vain-is now opposed to you, my Lord; and you are determined to overthrow it! But before you attempt to push this mighty statue. from its base, I would have you pause-I would have you survey it carefully-observe on which side it leaus-lest, in the burry of your intemperate zeal, you give it a wrong impulse and pull down the mighty mass in thunder about your own heads, and bury yourself and all that assist you in irrevocable ruin.

This, my Lord, is not what may happen; it must and will happen, if you persist in robbing us of our rights; and it is the undoubted right of every Englishman to express his sentiments freely, when those sentiments are conformable to the eternal order of things; that is, when they are not opposed to justice and equity. You perhaps are. offended at the freedom with which I deprecate the woes of despotism, with which I pry into the conduct of ministers, and censure that conduct when I think it wrong. But, my Lord, this is precisely what I ought to do; this is my duty, this is what the nation expects of me, and this is what I will do, till despotism be destroyed, or till the heart that now beats high in the cause of Freedom, shall cease its throbbings on the scaffold.

But, my Lord, I am no incendiary; I would excite no one to acts of violence; I write no blasphemy; I publish no sedition-all I want is truth, and liberty, and justice; and who does not see that we now stand in need of the promulgation of truth? of the re-establishment of liberty; of the impartial administration of justice? every body sees it, my Lord, and sees it with regret. But perhaps you will tell me, that some people stand so high, they are out of the reach of justice and the laws. A melancholy consideration, my Lord; but it may perhaps be true. On this subject I will venture to ask your Lordship a few questions.

Should a citizen of a free state, by plotting, and scheming, and cruelty, contrive to render himself absolute, so perfectly absolute, that his fellow citizens beheld him with terror, and were unable to put their laws in force against him, what are the citizens to do? are they to sit tamely by, and see him rob them of their rights, insult them in their miseries, and triumph over their wretchedness and despair? or are they to take arms to vindicate their claims to humanity, to protect their wives from insult, and their children from slavery? would the laws of nature authorize them to meet him in the field? or, if their forces were too small, to dispatch him in the best manner they were able? These, my Lord, are great and important questions, and perfectly worthy your most serious consideration. ****

Mr. Tierney, a man whom your Lordship cannot pretend to despise, has already announced to the nation that the grounds for the proposed measures were the Papers presented to the House by your Lordship, and that a more garbled, mutilated account of the transactions which they professed to detail, had never been submitted to the House. "Your Lordship has asserted," says Mr. Tierney, “that the main body of the nation is sound and loyal; and also that the nation is flourishing internally, and that the only exception to the countries which supported our commerce is America." Certainly, if these representations are to be believed in opposition to the evidences of our own senses, the country ought to be in a very happy condition; but as if the People were become blind and perverse, it turns out that not only 10,000 soldiers are to be placed over them, but that those soldiers are to be backed by statutes hitherto unknown; and after all this, they are to be assured that their condition is fortunate, and their finances flourishing!

In auswer to all this, what did your Lordship reply? Nothing; you confessed that there was much distress in the country, but you thought it was very much exaggerated. A very poor answer to the slashing attack of your opponent. Something better might fairly have been expected from

such an expert quibbler as you-but such is the fate of man: all his vanity and all his impudence sometimes forsake him when he stands most in need of them.

I must now entreat your Lordship's attention while I say a few words on your attempt to put down all public meetings. What meetings do you think will ever take' place, if they are to be under the restrictions mentioned in the Bill? Who will ever wish to assemble if they must never hear any other orator than the parish priest? Who will venture to stand in a crowd where nothing but spies and informers are to be seen, lurking about to report every word he may utter; while the reporters for the public journals are necessarily excluded, as no man dare remain in a meeting more than a quarter of an hour, when it is out of his own parish, unless he has an inclination to see Botany Bay?

This is a strange doctrine to preach to Englishmen, my Lord, and a doctrine that they cannot hear without horror and detestation. Who would believe, that in the nineteenth century, in an era, when even the People begin to think philosophically, sentiments so full of tyranny and despotism should be broached in an English House of Commons? Yet this is the fact, and the nation seems terrified at your audacity. But do not presume too much upon the passive character of the People: there are insults and outrages which they will not suffer tamely; and you do not know but that this prohibition to meet in a public manner may be among the number. If one may credit history, the right of assembling publicly is one of the first principles of the British Constitution; and if you will believe me, my Lord, to take away that right is to destroy the Constitution altogether. And when you have destroyed the Constitution, what do you mean to give the People in the stead of it? A military despotism? or a Republic? or a monstrous mixture and compound of every species of Government? It is possible you are not yet determined on that head; so that perhaps it would be impolite to ask you any more