Source 3

Transcript

To the Queen’s Most Excellent Majesty

The Loyal and Dutiful Address of the Working Classes living in the Vicinity of the Ouseburn Newcastle upon Tyne, in Public Meeting Assembled

With the deepest feelings of love, loyalty, and respect, we your Majesty’s faithful and dutiful subjects feel called upon at this time to approach your royal presence to draw your most gracious attention to the hitherto unexampled state of misery and destitution in which your majesty’s loyal and devoted subjects of this mighty empire are now placed, we view all around us the industrious classes without employment, without food, without clothing and without shelter, the great majority not knowing when the sun rises in the morning where to procure a morsel of food for themselves, their wives or famishing children, we see the smaller tradesmen and shopkeepers fast sinking into the mass of poverty and destitution, we see the trade completely at a stand and our merchants fast sinking into bankruptcy, commerce having left our shore, added to which the iniquitous restrictions on the importation of food greatly add to our difficulties, whilst to our astonishment we find that in the midst of all this suffering and distress of your Majesty’s loyal and dutiful subjects that the Parliament is about to separate without taking any steps to alleviate the distress of your people or even considering the cause, thus leaving your loyal dutiful and suffering people to struggle through a long and dreary winter without hope, and which we greatly fear will be attended with the most disastrous consequences as the links which bind society together are fast snapping.

That we dutifully beg leave to impress upon your Majesty’s most gracious and serious consideration, that the sole cause of all this accumulated [heap] mass of national misery, degradation [shame], and woe, lies in the unjust, partial, and defective state of the representation [right to vote], the great mass of your majesty’s loyal, dutiful and affectionate people being excluded from any participation in the choice of those who are called their representatives in the Commons House of Parliament, and it is our firm and decided opinion that until this defect is remedied this country can never again know internal peace or prosperity, the many being crushed down by the selfishness of the few, and unless this is amended our noble country instead of being the glory of the world must sink low in the scale of Nations. We therefore your Majesty’s loyal and dutiful subjects have under all these distressing circumstances approached your venerated [honoured] presence, most earnestly to pray that you will be graciously pleased to exercise your royal prerogative [right] and not allow the Parliament to separate or be prorogued [dissolved], until they have taken the state of the nation into consideration, and have provided a remedy for the existing distress and embarrassment by repeating the obnoxious [vile] taxes on the importation of provisions, and have passed an Act, confirming the undoubted right of every one of your Majesty’s Adult male population of 21 years of age and upwards untainted with crime to act and vote in the election of members to conduct the affairs of the nation in the Commons House of Parliament, and may God in his mercy grant that your Majesty long may reign over a free, contented, happy and loyal people.

In the name and on behalf of the Meeting

Isaac Bruce Chairman

Ouseburn Newcastle upon Tyne

October 5, 1841.