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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
and the growing despondency which pervades all classes of the community , from the remembrance , that no effort has been made hitherto for the restoration of Peace , and from the apprehension that none is likely to be made , without tl e direct and salutary influence of public opinion upon public
measures . That your petitioners , at a juncture which appears to them highly favourable to their wishes , address your honourable house with the greater confidence , because they conceive that the members of a new parliament , by looking abroad upon the peculiar
character of these eventful times , and by adapting their counsels to the real and imperious exigencies of the common weal , may obtain for themselves the gratitude of a free and enlightened people , and may stand distinguished to the latest posterity , as the restorers of tranquillity and security to the whole civilized world .
That your petitioners cannot , without feelings of unfeigned anxiety , observe the rapidity with which the calamities" of war have recently extended themselves from the impoverished and depopulated nations of Europe to the distant shores of South America * where civil discord subjects thousands and
tens of thousands to the destroying sword ,, and of North America , where a race of men , united to us by the ties of a common descent , a common language and a common religion , are now opposed to us , under circumstances the most distressing , and most alarming to them and to ourselves .
That your petitioner * believe it to be a fact quite unparalleled in the history - of civilized nations throughout Europe , that of the last twenty years , eighteen have been spent in actual warfare , and that the lives ab ^ ady sacrificed in the course of it , in ay , without exaggeration , be said to exceed the number of male adults now existing in Great Britain .
That , reflecting upon what has passed and is passing , in foreign lands , your petitioners have to mouru for the miseries endured by multitudes of valiant men , perishing on the field of battle , lingering months ami years in the gloomy prisons of the enemy , languishing in hospitals , or slowly wasting by disease in crowded camps and pestilential climates .
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That your petitioners , looking around them at home , are afflicted every where by those spectacles of calamity which necessarily accompany a state of continued war , and which are to he found in
the deserted cottages of ^ peasants and manufacturers , in the tears of aged parents , weeping for their offspring , because they are not , " and amidst the forlorn widows and helpless orphans of their slaughtered countrymen .
That while our youth , at an age and in numbers hitherto unexampled , are ballot ted for military service , and seduced or forced away from the useful and meritorious employments of husbandry and trade , your petitioners have to lament the past and approaching ruin of our once onulent merchants ,
the sudden interruptions giren to our once flourishing manufactures ., and the melancholy condition of our artizans , formerly , as your petitioners remember , a contented , industrious and honest race , but now disheartened by drearr poverty , degraded by galling
dependance , and exposed in many quarters to temptations , by which they may be precipitated into such acts of violence ^ as would render the forfeiture of their lives a necessary , but most deplorable measure of public justice , for the preservation of the public safety .
That , in addition to these dreadful effects of war , the burden of taxes accumulated and accumulating for the purpose of carrying it on , in countries so remote from each other and with expences so enormous , have raised most exorbitantly the price of provisions , have diverted from circulation
the current coin of this realm , have introduced in its stead a fictitious , precarious and fluctuating kiud of property in paper , and have filled our Gazettes . with bankruptcies , our gaols with debtors , and our numerous workhouses with paupers , who are
compelled to flee thither as to a place of refuge , from hunger and thirst , from cold and nakedness , and all the other baleful consequences of unexpected and involuntary exclusion from the daily labours which had supplied their daily bread .
That your petititioners , therefore , upon every principle dear to you and themselves , as Englishmen and as Christians , most earnestly beseech you to direct your attention to the multiplied scenes of private distress and
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74 t Peace . — Petition from Warwick .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1813, page 74, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2424/page/74/
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