Agents, assistants, or co-operaters in the Treason, to be punished as principals. It is therefore hereby further enacted, that any peer of the realm, or preress in her own right (whether protestant, catholic, or of any other re successive trials as aforesaid, be convicted of treason, whether of the Erst or second degree of atrocity, in corrupting, or attempting to corrupt and vitiate, an election of a Representative to serve in the Commons House of Parliament, shall, over and above such forfeiture of property as aforesaid, likewise, at the same time, forfeit his or her peerage or peerages, LXXIII. On a conviction of Trea-ligious persuasion) who shall in two son of the highest degree of atrocity, the Offender to forfeit his whole estate, -real and personal, to the Recorder of the Electorate, to hold the same in trust. A Folkmote to be convened to elect three Trustees, on whom the Trust is then to devolve. A Receiver to be appointed to value the Estate. One entire moiety to pass to the Heir at Law of the Criminal, and the other, after all Costs of Suit and other Ex-together with all ranks, titles, hopences have been deducted, to be given back to the convict. LXXIV. On conviction of an -Attempt only, or Treason of the second degree of atrocity; then, after a like process, three fourth parts to be returned to the convict. LXXV. And whereas any such treason as aforesaid must be attended with peculiar aggravation, and the most shocking atrocity, if, as aforesaid, perpetrated by a peer or peeress of the realm, because every peer is a special trustee for preserving the constitution of the State and the liberties of the Nation; and for being enabled to fill that high and dignified office, with the greater effect, is invested with hereditary privileges, legislative, judicial, and political; of which privileges, that of being a permanent counsellor of the Crown, with right of audience on demand, for apprising a king or a regent of danger to the state or to the throne, is not the least important. nours, privileges, and advantages, to the same appertaining; and that such peerage or peerages, with all titles, honours, privileges, and advantages thereunto appertaining, shall immediately pass to the next heir, if an heir be in being, or become extinct, as the case may be; and any such peer so degraded, although from thenceforth a commoner, shall not, during his life, be capable either of suffrage in the election of a Representative to serve in the Commons House, or of being thereunto returned. Note.-MAJOR Cartwright's BILL, entire, with an Abstract of its Contents, engraved plates to explain the mode of ballot ing, seventeen pages of Introduction, and ten pages of Notes, is sold for One Shilling and Sixpence. The next RrGISTER will contain an Að. dress from Mr. COBBETT to the Electors of Westminster. The Register is now published, and sold, wholesale and retail, at No. 192, Strand, where all orders should be addressed. Entered at Stationers' Hall. Printed and Published by and for WM. JACKSON, No. 11, Newcastle Street, and 192, Strand, London. Vol. 33, No. 6.---Price Two Pence. COBBETT'S WEEKLY POLITICAL REGISTER. 161] LONDON, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1818. NOTICE. The Communication intended for the present Number is postponed, in order to expedite the publication of Mr. COBBETT'S Petition to the House of Commons. This Petition was offered to Lord FOLKESTONE, with a view to its being presented to the House; but his Lordship, after peru sal, returned it at the same time giving permission to state, that the uniform, or, at least, usnal rejection of Petitions, when extending through several sheets of paper, was his only reason for declining to present it. TO THE HONOURABLE THE COM- DOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND SEMBLED. [162 which the character and conduct, of your Honourable House are, so well calculated to excite and perpetuate in the breasts of all mankind, could not, though thereunto urged by a sense of imperious duty, have been induced thus, to venture to beseech even one moment's attention from your Honourable. House, had he notbeen sustained by reflecting on, the well-known indulgent and benign deportment of your Ho-. nourable, House towards all his Majesty's, subjects, and more. es-, pecially towards. those who apProach you with their petitions. Your Petitioner, though living. in safety and happiness; though in no danger of arbitrary arrests; though in no danger of changing his house for a dungeon and his The Petition of William Cobbett, own clothes for a criminal's garb; of Batley, in the County of though surrounded by his family. Hants, now residing at North who can lay their heads on their Hampstead, in the State of pillows unhaunted by the ap New York, this 20th day of Humbly sheweth, That your Petitioner, always tremblingly alive to those feelings of respect, reverence and awe, prehension of seeing him no more; though there is no fiscal extortioner to wrest from him his money, and no spy to sell his blood: though thus happily situated, under the protection of a Printed by W. Jackson, 11; Newcastle-st reet, Strand. F Government, founded on the submit to your Honourable House Common Law of England, and carried on by men, amongst whom bribery, corruption, vote-selling and seat-selling, are not only not as notorious as the sun at noon his opinions as to the causes of those calamities and his prayer as to the remedy to be adopted, all which, however, he does with sen timents of deference the most com plete and of humility the most profound. day, but are wholly unknown and almost unintelligible in point of Powerful as are the motives, by meaning; though, as the natural which your Petitioner is actuated,. consequence of this just and wise the contemplation of the dignified Government, your humble Peti-character and of the renowned tioner sees around him no starva- wisdom tion, no beggary, and scarcely hears he of any of those acts which the law regards as crimes; though his eyes are never shocked by those erections, exhibitions and circumstances inseparable from of becoming an object of the disthe ignominious exit of malefac-pleasure or contempt of your tors, and though his ears are never annoyed and his heart wounded by the cries of the fatherless chil dren and the widows of men, who have sought shelter from the shame of pecuniary ruin in death inflict ed by their own hands; though, in short, your Petitioner is in the midst of a state of things, where all is order, content, peace and good will, yet the calamities of his of your Honourable House produces in his mind so complete a conviction of his utter insignificance, that it would be altogether impossible for him to support himself under the thought Honourable House, a thought, however, which is, happily for him, wholly removed from his mind by that great indulgence, that kind condescension, that extreme candour, that charitableness of interpretation, that scorn to listen to abuse of persons who have no power to answer, that magnanimous disdain of taking advantage of involuntary error, that fairness in representing, that abhorrence of foul play, and that native country are ever present to his mind, and that true and faithful allegiance which he bears to more-than-maternal tenderness for his lawful king, together with the a petitioning people, which have, unalterable attachment which he as the nation and the world so well bears to his country, impel him to know, invariably marked the pro ceedings of your Honourable a proportionate exertion of labour and production of food. House. Your Petitioner most humbly beseeches your Honourable House to permit him to express his sur prize, that this doctrine should have ventured to show its face, while the Statute Book of your Honourable House proves, that Emboldened by reflecting on these facts, not less important to him than they are notorious throughout the world, your Petitioner, though still filled with a sense of his insufficiency for the performance of so arduous a duty, will, with all humility, proceed the Poor-Laws have existed near to submit to your Honourable House his opinions as to the principal causes of the calamities, under which his native country is now suffering, calamities which have already swept away whole classes of the community, and which, if not speedily arrested in their course, appear to your Petitioner likely to produce a total dissolution of society. ly three hundred years, and while the facts are undeniable, that, dur ing those three hundred years the nation has, for long spaces of time, enjoyed the highest degree of prosperity, and that, until now, a redundant population has never been regarded as amongst the effects of that now-reprobated code; and, if your Petitioner be indulged by In pursuance of this object your your Honourable House in a perPetitioner humbly begs to be per-mission to express his surprize as mitted to state to your Honourable to this novelty, he fears not that House, that he has seen, in documents of high authority, but to which documents, from his pro- astonishment, and, if he may prefound respect for the sacred privi-sume, in your presence, to exerleges of Parliament, he refrains cise such a feeling, even his indig. from directly referring; in these nation, at the doctrine of an augdocuments your humble Petitioner mented and augmenting populahas seen, that the calamities of the lation being an evil, when it is nation have, in great part, at least, well known, that the records of been traced back to the Poor-your Honourable House contain Laws, operating, as here laid volumes upon volumes of details, down, so as to create a redundant collected and arranged at great population, a pópulation exceeding expence, to establish the fact of a your Honourable House will refuse to permit him to express his greatly augmented and augment- feeble as is his voice, insignificant ing population, as an incontestible as he knows his means to be, he, proof of greatly augmented and nevertheless, humbly begs to be augmenting national prosperity, allowed to express his hope, that wealth, and power. your Honourable House will not disdain and treat with scorn the jealousy which he feels for the With not less surprize, and with scarcely less indignation, can your Petitioner hear the calamities of consistency, nay, for the common the country ascribed to a surplus sense, of your Honourable House, of mouths exceeding the quantity of the produce of the exertion of labour, when not only is your Petitioner sure that your Honourable House is well aware, that the food produced by the labour of one labourer is, on an average, more than sufficient to sustain a hundred persons, but when the Statute Book and other Records of your Honourable House, of not more than twenty months standing, prove to the world, that your Honourable House imputed all the distresses of the country to a superabundant quantity, not of mouths, but of food; and that, upon this very ground, clearly and formally expressed in several solemn Reports, your Honourable House proceeded to pass, and tually did pass, and now keep in force, a law, the real as well as the avowed object of which was to raise the price, by diminishing the quantity, of human food.. ac Impotent as is your Petitioner, at which qualities in your Honourable House these new doctrines appear to your humble Petitioner to be aiming a mortal blow; for, though your Petitioner is too well aware that the wisdom of your Honourable House is invulnerable to all sorts of assault, yet the pride with which, as an Englishman, he must necessarily contemplate the spotless character of your Honourable House, and the zeal which he feels for your renown, urge him to resent, with all the hostile feelings of his heart, the affront offered to your Honourable, House in the formal and authoritative promulgation of doctrines directly at war with the records and acts of your Honourable House. Were it the misfortune of your humble Petitioner to be addressing himself to an assembly ignorant of such subjects from the nature. of its component parts, or rendered such by a disregard of every thing not connected with the gratification of a desire to amass pri |