on. In the year 1780 there were found in this nation men
deluded enough, (for I give the whole to their delusion,) on pretences
of zeal and piety, without any sort of provocation whatsoever, real or
pretended, to make a desperate attempt, which would have consumed all
the glory and power of this country in the flames of London, and buried
all law, order, and religion under the ruins of the metropolis of the
Protestant world. Whether all this mischief done, or in the direct train
of doing, was in their original scheme, I cannot say; I hope it was not:
but this would have been the unavoidable consequence of their
proceedings, had not the flames they had lighted up in their fury been
extinguished in their blood.

All the time that this horrid scene was acting, or avenging, as well as
for some time before, and ever since, the wicked instigators of this
unhappy multitude, guilty, with every aggravation, of all their crimes,
and screened in a cowardly darkness from their punishment, continued,
without interruption, pity, or remorse, to blow up the blind rage of the
populace with a continued blast of pestilential libels, which infected
and poisoned the very air we breathed in.

The main drift of all the libels and all the riots was, to force
Parliament (to persuade us was hopeless) into an act of national perfidy
which has no example. For, Gentlemen, it is proper you should all know
what infamy we escaped by refusing that repeal, for a refusal of which,
it seems, I, among others, stand somewhere or other accused. When we
took away, on the motives which I had the honor of stating to you, a few
of the innumerable penalties upon an oppressed and injured people, the
relief was not absolute, but given on a stipulation and compact between
them and us: for we bound down the Roman Catholics with the most solemn
oaths to bear true allegiance to this government, to abjure all sort of
temporal power in any other, and to renounce, under the same solemn
obligations, the doctrines of systematic perfidy with which they stood
(I conceive very unjustly) charged. Now our modest petitioners came up
to us, most humbly praying nothing more than that we should break our
faith, without any one cause whatsoever of forfeiture assigned; and when
the subjects of this kingdom had, on their part, fully performed their
engagement, we should refuse, on our part, the benefit we had stipulated
on the performance of those very conditions that were prescribed b