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    nation professing Christianity , to employ every effort in its power to pievent the multiplied horrors and cfilstniitjes of war . 5 . That under these circumstances , a Petition he presented to the honourable the House of Commons , praying " that no opportunity may be omitted that appears favourable for obtaining ' an equitable and permanent Peace .

    6 . That the following form of Petition be adopted : — To the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland , in Parliament assembled : the humble Petition of the undersigned Friends to

    Christianity and Humanity , in the Town and Neighbourhood of Leicester . Sheweth . —That your petitioners beg leave , in the constitutional exercise of their right as Englishmen , with feelings of deep anxiety , to represent to your honourable House , the pain with which they have contemplated

    the numerous and complicated horrors occasioned by the present long * protracted war 5 the severe privations and intolerable burthens , which its continuance has imposed on the lower and middling * classes of society $ and the general despondency which prevails , from the Apprehension that no effort is made for the restoration of peace .

    That your petitioners , therefore , humbly request permission to call the attention of your honourable house to a consideration of the miseries which this continued and wide-spread war has inflicted on mankind ; a consideration which cannot but afflict every heart not dead to humanity and Christian charity .

    That your petitioners reflect with horror , on the fact , that of the last twenty years , nineteen have been spent in actual warfare ; ( a circurostauce , as your petitioners believe , unparalleled

    in the history of Britain , since the revival of civilization in Euroj » e ) $ that during this melancholy period , the lives actually sacrificed by war , may , without exaggeration , be computed to have exceeded the number of all the

    male adults now in Great Britain ; and that , in the same space of time , almost every known part of the world has been visited by its dreadful calamities . That your petitioners cannot reflect , without agony , on the miseries endured by the thousands of our valiant

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    comitryuaen , ilyiug on the fields &f battle , immured for lingering years in the prisons of the enemy , languishing ^' in hospitals , or slowly wasting by disease in pestilential climates , or unwhoirscmc * camps . That , at home , the feelings of your petitioners are constantly agitated by rhe miseries ever attendant on a state

    of warfare - the desolated houses , the mourning widows , and the fatherless children of their slaughtered country . men ; nfiseries , the continued increase of which can he prevented only by peace . That your petitioners still further deplore the dreadful tendency of war ,

    to blunt the feelings of humanity , and to deprave the habits and institutions of social life ; they regard it as a subject of deep concern , that our youth , at an age , and in proportions unknown to former times , are ballotted for

    military services , that our youth , of both sexes , in numbers which humanity mourns to behold * are exposed to the pernicious influence of that dissipation and debauchery , which large military establishments never fail to produce .

    That , in addition to these appalling effects of war , your petitioners have to lament the decay of trade . They observe , with fearful apprehension , the ruin of our once opulent merchants , the languishing state of our once flourishing- manufactures , and the condition of our artizans , now degraded to poverty and dependence . Your

    petitioners are further compelled to state , that these evils , combined with the burden of taxes , occasioned by the war , and the price of provisions exorbitantly augmented by the same cause , have filled the Gazettes with bankrupts , and the gaols with debtors j and that the large and numerous workhouses are become insufficient to contain the

    thousands of paupers , who weekly seek an asylum there . That your petitioners view , with the strongest feeling's of distress , an extension of the war to our brethren and

    former fellow subjects of America , whose friendship has at all times been of the highest importance to the empire at large , but more particularly so to the suffering and industrious artizun * of this populous town and district . That ; above , all , your petitioners & « 1 ike indelible veproack wkicb a

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    f 2 Peace * — Proceedings * at Leicester .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1813, page 72, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2424/page/72/