1821. April 28.

First Lines

Constitutional

Distributive.

Political offences - state offences - offences against government - are the denominations by which acts bearing this character are, in these days, commonly designated: lese majesty divine and human is of the number of the denominations by which, in former days /days of yore/, offences of this same description were by the wisdom of the ancestors of those who number ancestry among their possessions, denominated and distinguished. Of lese majesty a division was made but with little difference, between the /its/ parts - between that which was human and that which was divine: lese Majesty human, an offence against the power, crown, dignity and majesty of that but too visible god, whose throne was upon earth: lese majesty divine, an offence against the power, crown, dignity and majesty of the invisible god whose throne is in heaven, and whos likeness may be seen at all times in any one of those earthly thrones filled at present by the Frederick's, the Ferdinands, the Alexanders, and the George's.

Under a Monarchy, offences of this class, together with the pile of securities raised for defence against them, throws the the whole groupe of offences really mischievous as it were into the shade.

In the persons of authors, printers, publishers, circulators, readers, lenders, borrowers, hirers, readers, hearers, - if not denunciators, of libellous discourses, - utterers and hearers if not denunciators of seditious discourses uttered in the way of oral converse, all discourses either actually displeasing to the God upon Earth /Monarch/, or any of hi chosen servants, or presumably displeasing to that likeness of his which is in heaven have long ago /always/ been extirpated /punished/ by halter, ball or bayonet /or impisonment./, but that it is from the labour of subjects that power, crown, throne, dignity, might majesty and dominion of Monarchs are derived from the labour of subjects, and that to labour men must live.