t in a petition penned as I shall read to
you.

"To the king our sovereign lord, in most humble wise shown unto your
most excellent Majesty, the inhabitants of your Grace's County Palatine
of Chester: That where the said County Palatine of Chester is and hath
been alway hitherto exempt, excluded, and separated out and from your
high court of Parliament, to have any knights and burgesses within the
said court; by reason whereof the said inhabitants have hitherto
sustained manifold disherisons, losses, and damages, as well in their
lands, goods, and bodies, as in the good, civil, and politic governance
and maintenance of the common wealth of their said country: And
forasmuch as the said inhabitants have always hitherto been bound by the
acts and statutes made and ordained by your said Highness, and your most
noble progenitors, by authority of the said court, as far forth as other
counties, cities, and boroughs have been, that have had their knights
and burgesses within your said court of Parliament, and yet have had
neither knight no burgess there for the said County Palatine; the said
inhabitants, for lack thereof, have been oftentimes touched and grieved
with acts and statutes made within the said court, as well derogatory
unto the most ancient jurisdictions, liberties, and privileges of your
said County Palatine, as prejudicial unto the common wealth, quietness,
rest, and peace of your Grace's most bounden subjects inhabiting within
the same."

What did Parliament with this audacious address?--Reject it as a libel?
Treat it as an affront to government? Spurn it as a derogation from the
rights of legislature? Did they toss it over the table? Did they burn
it by the hands of the common hangman?--They took the petition of
grievance, all rugged as it was, without softening or temperament,
unpurged of the original bitterness and indignation of complaint; they
made it the very preamble to their act of redress, and consecrated its
principle to all ages in the sanctuary of legislation.

Here is my third example. It was attended with the success of the two
former. Chester, civilized as well as Wales, has demonstrated that
freedom, and not servitude, is the cure of anarchy; as religion, and not
atheism, is the true remedy for superstition. Sir, this pattern of
Chester was followed in the reign of Charles the Second with regard to
the County Palatine of Durham, which is my fourth example. This county
had long lain out of the p