The Sun.
London, England, 1820-12-27 00:00:00

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 1820.

among all who truly loved their country. It was
true that the clamour for Radical Reform, had
for a time subsided. It was true, that the itiner-
ant field-preachers of treason had no longer their
assembled thousands to declaim to. It was true,
that the drilling and training of armed rebels was
not by law prohibited : that the insurrection
both in England and Scotland had proved abor-
tive ; and that the blood-thirsty gang of Thistle-
wood had suffered the proper punishment of their
crimes ; but the champions of rebellion were still
active in their vocation. Though their professed

object was changed, their real object was
still the same. Prior to the commencement,
and during the dependence of a late solemn
inquiry, when a regard to decorum, and a re-
gard to justice, alike induced the respectable
part of the community to wait the event in si-
lence--the agents of disaffection engaging a certain
portion of the press in their service, had incessantly
attacked all that is sacred and Venerable in our
Constitution. Its whatever form their sentiments
were expressed, whether in newspapers, pam-
phlets, or caricatures ; whether in their cease-
less addresses, or in their ceaseless answers to
these addresses—all these engines were alike
exerted to promote their mischievous designs.
The two Houses of Parlidment—the Judges of
the Land—the Dignitaries of the Church—the
ordinary Ministers of our holy Religion—and
that Religion itself—have all been made the ob-
jects of their ridicule and invective. If there was
one person more than another to whose feelings
on a late occasion some degree of tenderness was
due---it was his Majesty the King. Yet it was
against the sacred person of their Sovereign
that the shafts of the disaffected had been

most steadily levelled. It had been their earnest
endeavour to extirpate all those principles of
loyalty, all those habits of respect and personal
attachment to the Sovereign, which in better
times distinguished the British people. Nor was
it, alas ! among the lower orders alone that these
outrages against loyalty and decency had been
committed. 'Within the walls of Parliament it-
self, in the presence of the Peers of the United
Kingdom, assembled upon the late investigation,
the second Counsel for the defence' was bold
enough to assert, that the conduct of Nero,
the worst of the Roman tyrants, was the only pa-
rallel which he could find for the conduct of his
present Majesty. Forgetting alike the duty of al-
legiance to his lawful Sovereign, and the respect
due to the august assembly which he addressed,
that Learned Gentleman had not disdained to
borrow from the polluted manufactory of Hone
this most foul, disloyal, and unjust comparison.
And to what were we to ascribe this unparal-
leled persec ition ? Is his Majesty thus assailed
because his Ministers had advised him not to
place at the head 'of Arriale society one who
conduct had become the common scandal of Eu-
rope, and whose guilt had been proclaimed by a
great majority of her judges ? Or is it because,
upon assuming the reins of Government, his
Majesty ward in the footsteps of his venerated
predecessor, and did not dismiss from his presence
those tried and faithful servants who had en-
joyed his father's confidence ? Or is it because,
during the glorious period of his Regency, the
chosen servants of the Crown maintained the
struggle for European independence, and achiev-
ed for their country a triumph unexampled in any
former period of its history. The time was now
arrived when the voice of the loyal part of the
community ought to he heard from' the one end
of the empire to the other; and when it should
be made te; appear, from such meetings as the
present, that, although a few , unprincipled
demagogues may have for a time succeed-
ed in deluding the ignorant and mis-
leading the unwary, there was still an
immense majority of those in whom the
real sinews .and.strength of the country werecon-
centrated—determined to rally round the Throne,
and to defend with their fortunes, or, if tieces-
sary, with their lives, that unrivalled' C:,institu-
tion which other nations envy, and attempt to
imitate. He knew that, iii the common jargon
of the disaffected, nothing was held to be more
ridiculous and insignificant than the meeting of a
Scottish County: But, in answer to such .calum-
niators, he would affirm, that the present Meet-
ing did fully and fairly represent the County of
Edinburgh, as distinguished from the City ; that
it did collect the opinions—not, indeed, of the
mere rabble—but of those whose opinions were
of value, whom we would consult in the concerns
of private life, whom in all exigencies we would
entrust with our fortunes or our honour. He was
convinced that the, great mass of the people, in
whom there still remained virtuous'and religious
principle, would not long- resist the exampl.;' of
those who were their natural. guides and protec-
tors, and that they would soon be able to dis-
tinguish between their real and their pretended
friends.
General F. DUNDAS supported the Address.
Mr. FERGUSON, of_ Raith, after some observa-
tions, proposed the following amendment :
"That an humble Address be presented to his Majesty, to
express 'tor sincere attachment to his person and Govern•
went, and our firm resolution to support, against all its ene•
tries, that happy Constitution which placed the House o:
Brunswick on the throne of Great Britain.
• ‘• That we are prepared to resist, by every means in our
power, the designs of disaffected persons to excite sedition, or
attack the religion of the country, if any such attempts• shall
be rusde; but that we have c' eat satisfaction 'in being able
to state, that there appears to us to he no ground for imput-
ing to the inhabitants of this county, with whose conduct,
dispositions, and opinions, we are best acquainted, any dis-
loyalty, or disregard to religion.
..‘ That we are persuaded, that there Ties or existed, in any
part of these kingdoms, or in atty period of our history, a po-
pulation more loyal, more firmly attached to the Monarchy