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Untitled Article
trust that the Reformers in Parliament will rise to the full sense of the responsibility and dignity of their position . The occasion is a magnificent one . It is for them , now , to give an elevated tone to the popular feelings a defined aim to the national desire for improvement , a distinct expression to the great principles of Reform . The Amendment on the Ministerial Address ousrht to
be a National Manifesto , embodying the desires and determinations of the people on the mode and agents of Government . There should be none of the little tricks of the old party conflicts . None of the ambiguities by which parliamentary tacticians used to catch straggling votes . Carried or lost , if lost it can be , it should tell why the country will never again voluntarily endure the misrule of party . It should denounce those who , after the
lapse of so many generations , have revived the exercise of an irresponsible prerogative , the obsolete and fatal claim of the Stuart dynasty . For royal interpositions it should demand accountable advisers . It should proclaim that when a public act is imputed to the King personally , as in the dismissal of the late Administration , there is a gross violation of all that , by courtesy , is called the Constitution . It should indicate the absurdity of
calling for public confidence in the hitherto systematic opponents of public right . It should declare that the National Reformers tenaciousl y uphold the sacredness of property , and the obligation of applying public endowments to public purposes ; and that therefore they claim for the people the benefit of educational and religious funds which are grossly abused in their monopoly by a sectarian and Dolitical hierarchv . It should assert full and entire sectarian and political hierarchy . It should assert full and entire
civil equality for the holders of all the diversities of theological opinion . It should announce their determination to correct the abuses , to extend the advantages , and to liberalize t \ ie spirit of municipal institutions . It should pledge them to apply the now recognised principles of Reform to all political , civic , legal , or religious establishments that may require revision . And in the
respectful but manly language of free men , speaking with the voice and armed with the authority of a free people , it should remind the Sovereign that he holds his crown but by common acquiescence for common good ; that it befits not his station to lend his authority to the selfish purposes of a party : that in these lend his authority to the selfish purposes of a party ; that in these
sentiments he hears the reply to his appeal to the people ; and that should he , by renewing that appeal , allow the accursed enginery of electioneering demoralization again to bear upon their weakness , their dependence , and their fears , they will arouse the popular spirit to such a manifestation of determined principle
and resistless power as shall make faction , corruption , and oligarchic pride call on rocks and mountains to screen them from the awful judgment . Let the majority , as majority we think , and a large one too , they must be ; let them but thus speak , and the hearts of the mere men of office will quail within them , while the
Untitled Article
76 The Elections .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1835, page 76, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2641/page/76/
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