ever (on the most
charitable comment) be pronounced an evidence of no little heedlessness
and self-delusion on the part of those who framed it.

To sum up the matter--the right of petition (which, we have shewn as a
general proposition, supposes a right to condemn, and is in itself an
act of qualified condemnation) may in too many instances take the ground
of absolute condemnation, both with respect to the crime and the
criminal. It was confined, in this case, to the crime; but, if the City
of London had proceeded farther, they would have been justifiable;
because the delinquents had set their hands to their own delinquency.
The petitioners, then, are not only clear of all blame; but are entitled
to high praise: and we have seen whither the doctrines lead, upon which
they were condemned.--And now, mark the discord which will ever be found
in the actions of men, where there is no inward harmony of reason or
virtue to regulate the outward conduct.

Those ministers, who advised their Sovereign to reprove the City of
London for uttering prematurely, upon a measure, an opinion in which
they were supported by the unanimous voice of the nation, had themselves
before publickly prejudged the question by ordering that the tidings
should be communicated with rejoicings. One of their body has since
attempted to wipe away this stigma by representing that these orders
were given out of a just tenderness for the reputation of the generals,
who would otherwise have appeared to be condemned without trial. But did
these rejoicings leave the matter indifferent? Was not the _positive_
fact of thus expressing an opinion (above all in a case like this, in
which surely no man could ever dream that there were any features of
splendour) far stronger language of approbation, than the _negative_
fact could be of disapprobation? For these same ministers who had called
upon the people of Great Britain to rejoice over the Armistice and
Convention, and who reproved and discountenanced and suppressed to the
utmost of their power every attempt at petitioning for redress of the
injury caused by those treaties, have now made publick a document from
which it appears that, 'when the instruments were first laid before his
Majesty, the king felt himself compelled _at once_' (i.e. previously to
all investigation) 'to express his disapprobation of those articles, in
which stipulations were made directly affecting the interests or
feelings of the Spanish and P