Common Halls, in the City of London. But as I go along, I will undertake
to show the cause of that opposition, and expose the motives of that
little city faction, as clear as day-light. Nothing can, indeed, be more
plain than this fact, which is, that these factions, one and all, are
opposed to the principles of universal Liberty. They have all of them
their little, petty, selfish objects to obtain, and in the pursuit of
them, they know their greatest obstacle to be, that they cannot any
longer make the people their dupes and tools; and they know too, that no
man has been so zealously and so perseveringly instrumental as I have
been, to keep the people steady in one common pursuit--that of obtaining
something for themselves--that of struggling for the interest of the
whole community; and they know and feel that nothing could ever warp
me from my duty to the public; that I could never be bamboozled nor
muzzled, nor silenced, nor bribed, by any one of these factions; and
this, this it is that has roused against me their rage and their
hostility; and in proportion as I have exposed their sophistry so has
their malignity increased. Finding that they could neither answer nor
controvert my principles, nor put me down, they have been base enough
to resort to slander, and to the most wanton and barefaced falsehoods,
which they have trumped up to blacken me. The separation from my wife
was a subject that they never failed to urge against me, after having
tortured it into a thousand aggravated shapes; not one of which
was true. If, however, I would but have joined any one of these
factions--would have followed the example of Sir Francis Burdett, and
deserted the great mass of the people, by going over to, and joining
even the _shopkeeper_ or _householder_ faction, I might have deserted
my wife, and left her to starve, with impunity. I might have been as
profligate as any of my calumniators--might have been as debauched as
a Prince, or as abandoned as some of these Justice Parsons, and yet I
might have passed for one of the most pious and virtuous characters in