| Citation |
BC.770.067
28-31 May 1770:1731 (201)
From the Public Advertiser, March 14th.
The Address and Remonstrance of Apollo, the Graces, Muses,
and Livery of the Republic of Letters, in Parnassus
assembled, to their High Mightinesses the Supporters of the
Bill of Rights.
May it please your High Mightinesses,
We are happy that your High Mightinesses in your supreme
Court of Judicature, held at the London Tavern, so wisely
check and controul the King, Lords, and Commons: we thank
you for your endeavours to pluck from the crown what his
Majesty esteems the most valuable jewel in it, the right of
extending mercy; . . . [5 lines] But when your High
Mightinesses's ministers turn their attention to literature
and the polite arts, they get out of the line of your High
Mightinesses's jurisdiction, and usurp an authority unknown
to our constitution.
We reflect with horror upon their late conduct in Drury-
lane Theatre, one of the best pillars of our Republic.
While your High Mightiness's Ministers aim only at humbling
or deposing the King; while they struggle to prove that the
minority should govern; that places and pensions should be
bestowed on the friends to Wilkes and Liberty; . . . [7
lines, we don't complain,] but when they rudely enter our
theatres, and invade the property of our industrious and
well-meaning citizens, when they attack, or interrupt,
literature and the arts, they do a deed more ruinous in its
consequences than the levying of ship money by Charles the
First, or the dispensing power assumed by James the Second;
. . .
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