Cobbett's Weekly Register

CAPTAIN GORDON said, that with the view of showing the House what sort of ideas the Society from which this petition had emanated entertained, he would read them some of the publications which he believed it fostered. The first was a publication entitled, "The Poor Man's Guardian." From this publication the hon. Member read some paragraphs of very coarse and silly abuse, directed against the present King and his Government, and comparing them in their hatred to the press to Charles X., Polignac, and the other persons whose conduct had produced the last French revolution. The hon. Member observed, that this was a specimen of the knowparticu-much desired, and that was a specimen too of ledge, the wide circulation of which was so

WHIG PROSECUTION.

To the Readers of the Register, larly in the Country.

MY FRIENDS,

THE trial in consequence of this prosecution will positively take place in the Court of King's Bench, which is held in a building at the top of KingStreet, on the right-hand side of the entrance into the Guildhall of the city of London. The trial will be the first taken in the morning, and the Court meets at nine o'clock. Any friends from the country that may wish to see me on that morning will find me at No. 11, Bolt-Court, Fleet-Street.

the light in which these petitioners viewed what they called the liberty of the press.' There were other publications of the same class. There was The Republican of Saturday last, which contained a paragraph directed against all Kings and Priests whatever, and expressly declaring that the writer did not exEngland. He must say, that for himself, he empt from his censures the present King of differed from the hon. Member for Preston, and was not at all inclined to give his assistance to the dissemination of works of this tions had been instituted against some of these kind. It seemed that some Stamp prosecupublications. All that he regretted was that those prosecutions had not been of a different sort, and that, instead of being instituted by the Stamp Office, they had not been comNow, as somewhat illustrative of this Attorney-General, for the offence of having menced under the direction of the King's curious affair, I will here insert for your published such seditious language. He hoped careful perusal, the report of a debate that this matter would soon be taken up in the which took place in the House of Com-proper quarter; for if it were not, he should mons, on the subject of the press, on Tues-putting the subject into the shape of a motion. most assuredly take an early opportunity of day last, the 28th of June. I beg you to Mr. HUME had a petition to present to the read this debate very carefully, and you will see the mess that these sublime Whig Ministers have got themselves into. Look at them, see them without a single soul to keep them in countenance. However, when I have inserted the debate I shall offer you a few remarks upon it, and therefore I will break off at present.

TAXES ON THE PRESS. HUNT presented a petition from the National Political Union, complaining of the re

same purport as that presented by the hon. Member for Preston, but from different persons. He should take this opportunity of statcame to his turn to present the petition. He ing what he had intended to mention when it was glad that this discussion had occurred, in order to afford the hon. Member who had just his opinions on the subject of the press. The addressed the House, the means of expressing hon. Member had attacked the small publications, and had read some passages which he thought obnoxious. Why, if they were so, the hon. Member ought not to have read them, for they would now be read by thousands who had never before heard of them. How could the hon. Member ask the present Government to prosecute these publications, when he ought to know that every Member of the

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Cobbett's Weekly Register, Band 73