Page:An address to the people of England, Ireland, and Scotland.djvu/24

 laws respecting America, which passed in the last session of the last parliament. And as septennial parliaments are found to be the root from whence all our political grievances spring, they were also bound to endeavour the restoration of our ancient Privileges in respect to the duration of parliaments.

Surely, my friends and fellow citizens, this is a conduct which, at such a crisis of our affairs, was laudable and necessary; and a conduct which, if all the electors of Great-Britain had followed, we should not now have been at the eve of a civil war with America; nor such an interruption have been given to our commerce, as threatens the immediate ruin of thousands of families.

Surely, in such a state of our affairs, no honest and enlightened man could have refused binding himself to such endeavours; and though the obeying every mandate of