Page:The plot discovered; or, An address to the people, against ministerial treason (IA plotdiscoveredor00cole).pdf/13

 offered to his Majesty is the pretext—which outrage is ascribed to "the multitude of seditious pamphlets and speeches daily-printed, published, and dispersed with unremitting industry and with a transcendant boldness." At the time that Thomas Paine's books were dispersed "with an unremitting industry and a transcendant boldness" unexampled since that time, was not the same complaint made in a proclamation from the throne? The circumstances stated as causes in this Bill, the same circumstances then existed; but did they appear to produce a similar effect? Were not the higher classes infatuated, were not the multitude maddened with excess of Loyalty? The dispersion therefore of seditious pamphlets was not the cause: that was the cause which gave to sedition the colouring of truth, and made disaffection the dictate of hunger, the present unjust, unnecessary and calamitous War—a War that brought dearth, and threatens slavery! It was hunger and the sense of insulted wrongs that urged the ignorant mob with misplaced indignation to utter groanings and hisses against the Sovereign; and with regard to the stone or bullet I can best express my sentiments by adopting the language of the resolutions affixed to the Sheffield address: That I truly