§ Lord Stanley presented a Petition from several inhabitants of the town and neighbourhood of Preston, in the county of Lancaster, setting forth,
§ That the major part of the Petitioners are actually suffering, and all of them are compelled to see many thousands of their fellow-townsmen and neighbours suffer great hardships, for want of the commonest necessaries of life, which it is not in their 109 power, by all the exertions they can use, to procure for themselves and families, as the House will readily believe, when the Petitioners assure them (as indeed was proved before a Committee of the House in the last session of parliament,) that the wages of a respectable body of artisans resident in that once flourishing town and the neighbourhood are less by more than one half of what they were previously to the war with France, which began in the year 1793, whilst the price of every necessary article of subsistence has risen since that time in more than a twofold proportion; and that, in the humble judgment of the Petitioners, these and like distresses, to which most of them, as well as a large portion of their beloved countrymen, are at this time subjected, are attributable, as an immediate cause to the war in which the country is at present engaged; the Petitioners, therefore, are most anxious that if there exist any possibility of obtaining a peace, consistently with our honour and security, negociations may be immediately entered into for the attainment of this desirable object; this anxiety, however, they beg to assure the House, is not created in them by any dread of the enemy; but being unacquainted with any desirable object, to the attainment of which a prosecution of the war will be conducive, they are desirous that no opportunity may be omitted of entering into negociations for the restoration of the blessings of peace and amity; and that in the humble opinion of the Petitioners, the primary and principal causes of the evils they have enumerated, and of many others which they are unwilling to trouble the House with a recital of, are to be found in the admitting into the House of persons sent from old and decayed boroughs, who are, in mosteases, returned at the instigagation of ministers of the crown, or peers of the realm, contrary to the express tenor of our laws and constitution; and in the admittance also into the House of many minor placemen and pensioners, who have an interest different, and, in most cases, in opposition to the great body of the Commons of I he united Kingdom, whom they ought to represent; and praying, that the House will, in its great wisdom, recommend to his royal highness the Prince Regent, that all possible means may be adopted, consistently with the national honour and security, of restoring to his Majesty's faithful subjects the blessings of peace; and likewise the Petitioners most 110 humbly pray that the House will, as early as possible, take into their consideration the present state of the representation of the Commons in parliament; and they have full confidence that the House will readily discover a means of reforming the many abuses which the Petitioners cannot doubt the House is well aware exist in his particular,"
§ Ordered to lie upon the table.