the petition and the resolutions passed at the Bath meeting, caused Lord
Camden to surrender thirty-five thousand a year to the public. This
alone was some good. Nor must we stop here. Almost all the petitions in
which I was ever concerned, petitioned for the abolition of all sinecure
and useless places, and unmerited pensions; and I always particularly
denounced the sinecures of the late Marquis of Buckingham, the other
Teller of the Exchequer, and prayed and petitioned for its abolition. At
the death of the old Marquis _it was abolished_. Does any man of sense
and candour believe, for a moment, that this would have ever been
done to this hour, if it had not been for the prayers, petitions, and
remonstrances of the people? Here, then, is another saving of upwards of
thirty thousand pounds a year.--Therefore, I say, that the great public
meetings _have_ done a great deal of good; and those who promoted them
have rendered very considerable service to the country, although
they have themselves been the victims of that system of tyranny and
oppression, which, in these two instances alone, has had its plunder
curtailed in more than _sixty thousand pounds a year_. Add to all this,
that the Prince Regent surrendered fifty thousand pounds per annum to
the public exigencies. Will any man say that the Regent would have done
this, had it not been for the great public meetings held in Spafields
and other places? and was this nothing? Again, Mr. Ponsonby resigned his
Chancellor's pension of _four thousand pounds a year_. Is this nothing?
Here I have shown that, within _three months_ of the great meeting first
held in Spafields, and between the second and third meeting which
was advertised, no less a sum than NINETY THOUSAND POUNDS A YEAR was
surrendered for the public exigencies; and was this doing nothing? To be
sure, five persons had been found guilty of rioting on the day of the
second Spafields meeting, and Cashman was sentenced to death; but this
had nothing to do with the meeting itself, which met only for the
purpose of petitioning Parliament, and peaceably separated, after