ged, "have a full and immovable
conviction--a conviction which they believe to be universal throughout
the kingdom--that the House does not, in any constitutional or
rational sense, represent the nation; that, when the people have
ceased to be represented, the Constitution is subverted; that taxation
without representation is a state of slavery; that the scourge
of taxation without representation has now reached a severity too
harassing and vexatious, too intolerable and degrading, to be longer
endured without resistance by all possible means warranted by the
Constitution; that such a condition of affairs has now been reached
that contending factions are alike guilty of their country's wrongs,
alike forgetful of her rights, mocking the public patience with
repeated, protracted, and disgusting debates on questions of
refinement in the complicated and abstruse science of taxation, as if
in such refinement, and not in a reformed representation, as if in a
consolidated corruption, and not in a renovated Constitution,
relief were to be found; that thus there are left no human means of
redressing the people's wrongs or composing their distracted minds,
or of preventing the subversion of liberty and the establishment of
despotism, unless by calling the collected wisdom and virtue of the
community into counsel by the election of a free Parliament; and
therefore, considering that, through the usurpation of borough
factions and other causes, the people have been put even out of a
condition to consent to taxes; and considering also that, until their
sacred right of election shall be restored, no free Parliament can
have existence, it is necessary that the House shall, without delay,
pass a law for putting the aggrieved and much-aroused people in
possession of their undoubted right to representation co-extensive
with taxation, to an equal distribution of such representation
throughout the community, and to Parliaments of a continuance
according to the Constitution, namely, not exceeding one year."

A long discussion ensued as to whether this petition should be
accepted by the House or rejected as an insulting libel. Several
members of the House denounced it. Other members, while objecting to
its terms, urged its acceptance. Among them the most notable was
Mr. Brougham. The petition, he said, was rudely worded, and its
recommendations were such as no wise lover of the English Constitution
could wholly subscribe to; but it pointed t