The Crisis. Группа авторов

      Perret sells out, Hotham buys in, and his Seat in Parliament is thus purchased and filled up by your Lordships.¹⁰ I must interrogate your Lordships still further—Of all your other wicked Counsels, what impolitic, diabolical Spirit, could instigate you to advise your Pupil ever to consent

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      to, much more to persevere, in the inhuman Massacre of America? Why were the Petitions of the City of London answered in your Reign, my Lords, with Sneers, Insults, Abuse, Menaces, indignent Frowns, and even with Accusations of High Treason? I refer your Lordships to your last Bashaw-like Answer to the City Petition, where you will find (to the general Astonishment) that you have almost impeached a part of his Majesty’s faithful and beloved* People, of High Treason, for only making a constitutional Supplication to the Throne; for humbly remonstrating against the pernicious Influence of Corruption and your Lordships; and for expressing natural and just Feelings for their Fellow Subjects, doomed by your Lordships to Destruction in America.

      These my Lords, are some of the most palpable Wounds which your Lordships have, by Hirelings and Dupes, already given, there are others in Embryo, which you are about to give to the British Constitution. For these Iniquities, when your Measure is full, my Lords, you must assuredly account at last, unless, like true Cowards, you fly from Public Justice, or disappoint the meritorious Executioner, by the timely Application of your own guilty Hands, to the rottenest and most detested Hearts that ever beat. It can be no Secret to your Lordships, that you are universaly considered as the CATALINES¹¹ of an imperious Gang of Ministerial Parricides, you must be sensible that the Nation has hitherto submitted with unexampled Patience, not, properly speaking, so much to the puerile Obstinacy of a Brunswick, as to the despotic sway of a Bute

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      and Mansfield; at once the greatest Tyrants, and the greatest Traytors, and the greatest Cowards under Heaven. The truth of these Assertions is fully proved by your banefull Councils, from whence all the Grievances above mentioned have arose, and from whence more (I fear) will shortly spring. If murdering their Innocence and Virtue, in the Subject and extinguishing their influence in the Sovereign, is Tyranny, Treason, and rank Cowardice, I am no false accuser of your Lordships. The Instances I have already given, are such as would blacken the Reigns of a NERO, or DOMITIAN,¹² but they are such my Lords as sprung Naturally from those infernal Institutes which your Lordships have incessantly penned and preached, for the Edification of a British King; of a King; who neither does, nor possibly can, hold the Crown of England upon such Principles as your Lordships have laboured to instill, these Labours, my Lords, are crying Sins against the Liberties, and Majesty of this Nation, and the Wages of these Sins is Death.

      The present Generation (like that which called this Family to the Throne) are Revolutionists; your Lordships are, we know, of a contrary Perswasion. Under such Tutors our steady, persevering, unhappy Sovereign, must have imbibed the most unconstitutional, absurd, and fatal Notions. Your Lordships should have Taught him in his earliest Days, that Steadiness and Perseverance can never be maintained with Reason, but in the Cause of Truth and Virtue, Justice and Humanity. Cast your Eyes, my Lords, upon the black Catalogue of Crimes above enumerated, and say in which of them a Spark of Virtue can be seen? Turn over the political Institutes you have penned for your royal Pupil’s use, and say in what part of that elaborate Manuel, you have, with Truth, delineated the Prince, the Politician, or the Soldier? Nay, the Man of Honour, Humanity,

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      or Common Honesty? It is too well known, it is most severely felt, that your Sovereign has from his Infancy proceeded, and still magnanimously persists, upon the Plan formed by your Lordships for his Direction. He opens his Ears and his Heart (if he ever opens them at all) to you alone. He cajoles his Parliament, he despises his People, but he confides in you. After all, my Lords, what is this Confidence in your Lordships likely to produce? A Snare to him, and Ruin to his People. Your Lordships have vitiated his Soul with every Quality of a genuine Scot, except true Valour, and Discernment. The one would, in your Opinion, have made England too Happy, the other would have made yourselves too odious. This would have blasted your impious Designs, and that would have crushed your pusillanimous and baneful Politics. The bitter Fruits of your political System, my Lords, begin now to ripen into a total Desolation, or, at least, an irrecoverable loss of a large, a valuable, a virtuous, (and therefore an obnoxious) part of the British Empire, into Foreign Wars; and intestine Commotions and Calamities; into universal Discontent and Slaughter; into Misery, Revenge, Anarchy, and a Revolution. Every feeling Man most devoutly wishes your Lordships an ample, and a speedy Share of that National Resentment, which you have in Season, and out of Season, laboured to deserve. That your pernicious and detested Lives may be prolonged, till your Lordships shall receive from the Hand of Public Justice, the Reward of all your indefatigable Pains to betray your King, and destroy your Country, is the Prayer of

      CASCA.

      YES.

      Printed and published for the Authors, by T. W. SHAW, in Fleet-Street, opposite Anderton’s Coffee House, where Letters to the Publisher, will be thankfully received.