§ This day his majesty came in state to the House of Peers, and being seated on the throne, the gentleman usher of the Black Rod was directed to summon the Commons to attend. The Speaker immediately obeyed the summons, and presented himself at the bar, attended by more than one hundred members. His majesty then delivered the following most gracious Speech to both Houses:
§ "My Lords and Gentlemen;
§ "I have taken the earliest occasion of assembling you here, after having recurred to the sense of my people.
§ "In meeting you personally for the first time since the death of my beloved father, I am anxious to assure you, that I shall always continue to imitate his great example, in unceasing attention to the public interests, and in paternal solicitude for the welfare and happiness of all classes of my subjects.
§ "I have received from foreign powers renewed assurances of their friendly disposition, and of their earnest desire to cultivate with me the relations of peace and amity.
§ "Gentlemen of the House of Commons;
§ "The estimates for the present year will be laid before you.
§ "They, have been framed upon principles of strict economy; but it is to me matter of the deepest regret that the state of the country has not allowed me to dispense with those additions to our military force which announced at the commencement of the last session of parliament.
§ "The first object to which your attention will be directed is the provision to be made for the support of the civil go- 12 vernment, and of the honour and dignity of the Crown.
§ "I leave entirely at your disposal my interest in the hereditary revenues: and I cannot deny myself the gratification of declaring, that so far from desiring any arrangement which might lead to the imposition of new burthens upon my people, or even might diminish, on my account, the amount of the reductions incident to my accession to the throne, I can have no wish, under circumstances like the present, that any addition whatever should be made to the Settlement adopted by parliament in the year 1816.
§ "My Lords and Gentlemen;
§ "Deeply as I regret that the machinations and designs of the disaffected should have led, in some parts of the country, to acts of open violence and insurrection, I cannot but express my satisfaction at the promptitude with which those attempts have been suppressed by the vigilance and activity of the magistrates, and by the zealous cooperation of all those of my subjects whose exertions have been called forth to support the authority of the laws.
§ "The wisdom and firmness manifested by the late parliament, and the due execution of the laws, have greatly contributed to restore confidence throughout the kingdom; and to discountenance those principles of sedition and irreligion which had been disseminated with such malignant perseverance, and had poisoned the minds of the ignorant and unwary.
§ "I rely upon the continued support of parliament in my determination to maintain, by all the means intrusted to my hands, the public safety and tranquillity.
§ "Deploring, as we all must, the distress which still unhappily prevails among many of the labouring classes of the community, and anxiously looking forward to its removal or mitigation, it is in the mean time our common duty, effectually to protect the loyal, the peaceable, and the industrious, against 13 those practices of turbulence and intimidation, by which the period of relief can only be deferred, and by which the pressure of the distress has been incalculably aggravated.
§ "I trust that an awakened sense of the dangers which they have incurred, and of the arts which have been employed to seduce them, will bring back by far the greater part of those who have been unhappily led astray, and will revive in them that spirit of loyalty, that due submission to the laws, and that attachment to the constitution, which subsist unabated in the hearts of the great body of the people, and which, under the blessing of Divine Providence, have secured to the British nation the enjoyment of a larger share of practical freedom, as well as of prosperity and happiness, than have fallen to the lot of any nation in the world."
§ His majesty then retired, and the Commons returned to their House.