Each house ordered a narrative of these proceedings to be published; and their mutual animosity had proceeded to such a degree of rancour as seemed to preclude all possibility of reconciliation.

The commons, in the whole course of this transaction, had certainly acted from motives of faction and revenge; for nothing could be more unjust, frivolous, and partial, than the charge exhibited in the articles of impeachment, their anticipating address to the king, and their affected delay in the prosecution.

Their conduct on this occasion was so flagrant as to attract the notice of the common people, and inspire the generality of the nation with disgust.

This the whigs did not fail to augment by the arts of calumny, and, in particular, by insinuating that the court of Versailles had found means to engage the majority of the commons in its interest.
PETITION OF KENT.
This faction had, since the beginning of this session, employed their emissaries in exciting a popular aversion to the tory ministers and members, and succeeded so well in their endeavours, that they formed a scheme of obtaining petitions from different counties and corporations that should induce the commons to alter their conduct, on the supposition that it was contrary to the sense of the nation.

In execution of this scheme, a petition signed by the deputy-lieutenants, above twenty justices of the peace, the grand jury and freeholders of the county of Kent, had been presented to the house of commons on the eighteenth of May, by five gentlemen of fortune and distinction.