fourteen years. I now, therefore, call upon every one of these
corrupt and despicable knaves to come forward, either individually or
collectively, and substantiate _some one_ of those charges which they
have so long, so repeatedly, and so unblushingly preferred against me.
Upon all occasions, they have unequivocally and unanimously denounced
me as an enemy to social order, an enemy to the Whigs, an enemy to the
Tories, and an enemy, as they say, to the country.

Now, then, is their time to silence me, if they have it in their power
to establish one of the crimes with which they have charged me; but
if they remain silent, and cannot establish any one of their charges
against me, what a race of cowardly, profligate beings they must feel
themselves to be! But the fact is, that all

these vermin _know_ that they were propagating the most barefaced and
wanton falsehoods against me. And who are these men that have been the
foremost to accuse me? Some of the most degraded, swinish, and abandoned
of the human race. And what has been the cause of all their hostility to
me? Why, merely because I have been the undisguised and uncompromising
advocate of the people's rights and liberties; because I have publicly
and unequivocally, upon all occasions, maintained the right of annual
parliaments, universal suffrage, and vote by ballot: in this I have been
joined by the great mass of the people of England. and Scotland. For
my public exertions in 1816 and 1817, to promote this great cause, I
received the most cordial testimony of the regard and esteem of my
fellow-countrymen--I received repeated votes of thanks from almost every
town and city of consequence in the kingdom, and particularly from the
North, and from Scotland. I believe I had the approbation of _nine
tenths_ of the industrious and most valuable classes of the community,
because I fearlessly advocated the right--the constitutional right of