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244] ANNUAL REGISTER

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the truth in open day before you; since the realm stands upon the very brink of its destruction; you must not wonder that you are not received by me this day, with the same heart-felt joy, which has at other times attended your assemblies before the throne. My heart does not upbraid me with having concealed any thing from you: twice have I spoken to you with all the truth which my office demanded; and all the sincerity which true honour required. The same sincerity shall now conduct my speech: in which the past must be recapitulated, in order to set right the present. 
 It is a melancholy, but a well-known truth, that hatred and discord have torn the realm: the people have been a long time severed by two parties; divided as it were into two separate nations, united only in the mangling of their parent country. You know how this discord has produced rancour; rancour revenge; revenge persecution; and persecution new revolutions; which grew at last into a periodical disease; disfiguring and humiliating the whole commonwealth. Such commotions have shook the realm, for the sake of a few people's ambition: streams of blood have flowed; poured out sometimes by one part, and sometimes by another: and always the people have been sacrificed to quarrels, in the event of which themselves had very little concern; but whose unfortunate consequences they were sure to feel the first, and most. The only end of the rulers has been to fortify their own power: all has of necessity been adapted to that purpose: often at the expence of their fellow-citizens; always at that of their country. Where the law was clear, the letter of it has been perverted: where it was palpably repugnant, it has been broken though. Nothing has been sacred to a people inflamed with hatred and revenge: and the feeds of confusion have in the end spread so far, it has become a declared opinion, that a majority is above law; and owns no restraint but its own pleasure.
 Thus liberty, the noblest of the rights of men, has been transformed into an insupportable aristocratical tyranny, in the hands of the ruling party; which was itself enslaved, and led at pleasure by a very small number of its body. The notice of a new assembly of the states, has made every one tremble: far from considering how the affairs of the nation might be best transacted, they have been only busied in getting together a majority for their party; that they might be skreened from the insolence and lawless violence of the other. If the interior situation of the realm stood thus endangered; how hideous was its external aspect! I blush to speak about it: born a Swede, and a king of Sweden, it should be an impossibility for me to believe that foreign schemes could govern Swedish men: nay more, that the very basest means should have been employed for that purpose. You know what it is I mean: my blushes ought to make you deeply sensible into what contempt the kingdom has been thrown by your quarrels. 
 Such was the situation wherin I found this kingdom, when I received, by the decrees of the Divine Providence, the Swedish scepter. Your heart will tell you I have spared no pains to unite you: in all

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For the YEAR 1772.   [245

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all my speeches from the throne, and on all other occasions, I have insisted upon concord, and submission to the law: I have given up as well what might concern me as a man, as what might be dear to me as a king. I have held no obligations too difficult to submit to, no steps too rugged to pass, in order to reach an end so valuable to my parent country. If there be one among you, who can deny this solemn truth, let him freely stand up, and speak.
 I formed a hope that these endeavours on my part, would have released you from those chains which foreign gold, intestine hatred, and avowed licentiousness, were on the point to fix upon you; and that the hideous examples of other countries thus enslaved, might have afforded you a threatening warning: but all has been in vain. you have been misguided on one part by your leaders; and on the other, inflamed by your private animosities. All fences have been trampled to the earth; all stipulations broken; licentiousness has had its free course; and has run on with the more violence, the more pains have been taken to check it. The most virtuous, the most deserving, the first, and highest of your fellow-citizens, have been sacrificed; veterans in office, men of known capacity, and long-tryed faith, have been degraded; whole magistracies have been suspended; nay, even the people crushed: their just complaints have been tortured into sedition: and liberty itself at length transformed into an aristocractic yoke no Swede can bear. Even the Most High has appeared in anger at the unrighteousness of those who governed: the earth refused its natural increase; and famine and distress fell heavy on the whole country. Yet even then, far from endeavouring at a timely remedy, when I insisted on such measures, you appeared more attentive to exert your own vengeances, than to find means of relief for your constituents: nor could necessity itself oblige you to look into the distresses of a miserable people, till it was very, very near too late. In this manner was a whole year spent, under one dyet; burthensome to the country, yet destitute of any good effect. My representations to you proved all in vain, all my endeavours fruitless. I waited in silence, full of grief for the distresses of my country, to see what the nation would think of this conduct of its representatives, toward me, and toward themselves. Part have submitted to the tyranny, with sighs; but in silence, not knowing where help could be found, or by what means to seek it: despair has seized one corner of the kingdom; and there they have taken up arms. In this situation, when the whole country, when true liberty, and just security, (not to speak of the danger of my own life) when all was thus at stake, I saw no other way, next after the assistance of the Divine Providence, but to apply to those measures which have freed other generous and resolute nations; and which formerly freed Sweden herself, from unsufferable violence and oppression, under the conduct of Gustavus Vasa. God has been pleased to bless my undertaking: and I have seen that zeal for their country, which formerly glowed in the hearts of Engelbrecht, and Gustavus Erickson, revive                  

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---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-05-12 14:36:45