A petition of the gentry, clergy, and freeholders, of the county of Berks, assembled at a public meeting for the purpose of taking into consideration the propriety of adopting resolutions in consequence of the decision of the house on the tenth report of the commissioners of naval enquiry, was presented to the house, by Mr. Charles Dundas, and read; setting forth, "that the petitioners have read with indignation the intimation in the votes of the house, of the abuses discovered in the said report; and they share the national exultation at the resolutions of the house of the 8th and 10th of April last; and the petitioners observe with gratitude that the house intend to prosecute further enquiry to the detection of all abuses which may exist in any other department of the state, and that they have ordered bills to be prepared for that purpose; and the petitioners entertain a confident hope, that in framing, the above-named bills, the house will carefully provide that the power constituted will be equal to the professed object, both as to the authority to be conferred, and the integrity of those by whom it is to be executed; and that the house will attend particularly to obviate a repetition of the obstacles raised by persons in office to investigation; for the petitioners submit, that if any thing can be worse than a deep-rooted system of abuse and peculation in the management of the public money, it would be the institution of a system of revision, in its nature a burlesque upon investigation, and in its result a mockery of justice; and that the petitioners conceive, that the most effectual method to check abuses, will be to punish already detected delinquency; and they therefore hope the house will be deferred by no considerations from pursuing with effect what they have begun with so much honour; and that 651 they will not relax in their efforts till they have brought all persons concerned in the misapplication of public monies to condign punishment, and given to the world a signal demonstration, that in the representatives of the people will be found, not the abettors of iniquity, but the faithful guardians of the nation, and the zealous vindicators of the law."