Page:The plot discovered; or, An address to the people, against ministerial treason (IA plotdiscoveredor00cole).pdf/53

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remain; (the forms of the Roman republic were preserved under Tiberius and Nero) but the reality will have flown. No political information from the Press can previously enlighten the people; and if they meet, the deliberation must be engrossed by the hireling defenders of that scheme of cruelty and imposture, which the ministry chuse to call our Constitution. We can no longer consult in common on common grievances. Our assemblies will resemble a silent and sullen mob of discontented slaves who have surrounded the palace of some eastern tyrant. By the operation of Lord Grenville's Bill, the Press is made useless. Every town is insulated: the vast conductors are destroyed by the which the electric fluid of truth was conveyed from man to man, and nation to nation. A French Gentleman in the reign of Lewis the fourteenth was comparing the French and English writers with all the boastfulness of national prepossession. Monsieur (replied an Englishman better versed in the principles of freedom than the canons of criticism) there are but two subjects worthy the human intellect—Politics and Religion, our state here, and our state hereafter: and on neither of these dare you write! This spirited reproof may now be retorted on us, By Mr, Pitt's Bill Britonsare