cavalry were placed in a menacing attitude near the place
of our meeting, the meeting was conducted and concluded
in the most peaceable and orderly manner, and the result
of it was a petition to your Honourable House, voluntarily
signed by upwards of twenty thousand men, which
petition has been presented to, and received by, your Honourable
House.

"That your petitioner, who had met with every demonstration
of public good-will and approbation in the
said city, was surprised to see in the public newspapers
an account of a boy having been sent to gaol by certain
Police Officers and Justices, for having pulled down a
posting-bill, which alleged your petitioner to have been
hissed out of the City of Bristol, and containing other
gross falsehoods and infamous calumnies on the character
of your petitioner, calculated to excite great hatred against
your petitioner, and to prepare the way for his ruin and
destruction.

"That your petitioner, who trusts that he has himself
always acted an open and manly part, and who has never
been so base as to make an attack upon any one, who had
not the fair means of defence, feeling indignant at this act
of partiality and oppression, came to London with a view
of investigating the matter, and this investigation having
taken place, he now alleges to your Honourable House,
that the aforesaid posting-bills, containing the infamous
calumnies aforesaid, were printed by _J. Downes_, who is
the printer to the Police; that the bill-sticker received