The names and condition of the parties
will be found in the petition. To the other topics touched upon in the
petition I shall not now advert, from a wish not to encroach upon the
time of the House; but I do most sincerely call the attention of your
Lordships to its general contents--it is in the cause of the Parliament
and people that the rights of this venerable freeman have been violated,
and it is, in my opinion, the highest mark of respect that could be paid
to the House, that to your justice, rather than by appeal to any
inferior court, he now commits himself. Whatever may be the fate of his
remonstrance, it is some satisfaction to me, though mixed with regret
for the occasion, that I have this opportunity of publicly stating the
obstruction to which the subject is liable, in the prosecution of the
most lawful and imperious of his duties, the obtaining by petition
reform in Parliament. I have shortly stated his complaint; the
petitioner has more fully expressed it. Your Lordships will, I hope,
adopt some measure fully to protect and redress him, and not him alone,
but the whole body of the people, insulted and aggrieved in his person,
by the interposition of an abused civil and unlawful military force
between them and their right of petition to their own representatives.
His Lordship then presented the petition from Major Cartwright, which
was read, complaining of the circumstances at Huddersfield, and of
interruptions given to the right of petitioning in several places in the
northern parts of the kingdom, and which his Lordship moved should be
laid on the table.
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