# Manx Primary Source Archive — Transcription

**Source image:** `20260219_143510-2.jpg`  
**Transcribed:** 2026-02-25 19:26  
**Method:** Automated (Claude Batch API — claude-opus-4-6)

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13

then the additional guard, that in the presence
of the Keys every man has a fair trial, and that
any wrong is then less likely to be attempted.

Yet your Petitioners do by no means covet
this onerous duty : if the public good be thought
to require their resignation of it; if the criminal
judge or judges shall hereafter hold their offices
by a safe tenure, not removable at pleasure, or
without due and public proof of guilt, then your
Petitioners would with pleasure be freed from a
duty of an irksome nature, the execution of
which is attended with inconvenience to them-
selves. But at present they submit to the feel-
ings of every Member of this Honorable House,
whether it becomes them to submit to what they
deem a public wrong, combined with apparently
studied insult.

In the mean time, should proceedings in the
criminal court, in the absence of your Peti-
tioners, take place, should an accused person
be convicted and executed, your Petitioners
refrain from applying to that act the term
which it may be thought to deserve.

That ever since your Petitioners have had the
happiness to be under the paternal and imme-
diate rule of the Crown, from 1765 to this day,
not one single Governor, or Lieutenant-Go-
vernor, the Duke of Athol excepted, has been
appointed by His Majesty, with whom their