They represented their sovereign as
dishonoured, and their country as betrayed, or, in their fiercer
paroxysms of fury, reviled their sovereign as betraying it.
Their pretences I have here endeavoured to expose, by showing, that more
than has been yielded, was not to be expected, that more, perhaps, was
not to be desired, and that, if all had been refused, there had scarcely
been an adequate reason for a war.
There was, perhaps, never much danger of war, or of refusal, but what
danger there was, proceeded from the faction. Foreign nations,
unacquainted with the insolence of common councils, and unaccustomed to
the howl of plebeian patriotism, when they heard of rabbles and riots,
of petitions and remonstrances, of discontent in Surrey, Derbyshire, and
Yorkshire; when they saw the chain of subordination broken, and the
legislature threatened and defied, naturally imagined, that such a
government had little leisure for Falkland's island; they supposed that
the English, when they returned ejected from port Egmont, would find
Wilkes invested with the protectorate, or see the mayor of London, what
the French have formerly seen their mayors of the palace, the commander
of the army, and tutor of the king; that they would be called to tell
their tale before the common council; and that the world was to expect
war or peace from a vote of the subscribers to the bill of rights.
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