The conference. Instructions given to Sir Robert Ladbroke, Knt. William Beckford, Esq; the Right Hon. Thomas Harley, Esq; and Barlow Trecothick, Esq; representatives of the City of London: by their constituents.

Printed on one side only of a piece of watermarked laid paper, dimensions 32.5 x 19.5 cm. Folded twice for insertion in the magazine. Good, apart from strip of approximately 0.5 x 5.5 cm loss along top fold, affecting one word of text, and neatly repaired with archival tape. At head of page clean impression of satirical engraving (roughly 8.5 x 13 cm), showing Beckford (father of the connoisseur), in Lord Mayor's robes, telling Harley to 'Receive Instructions & not Silver'. Harley, holding a jacket, tailor's iron and shears, replies 'Teach us our Lesson! Are we then School Boys? Rather cut assunder my Thread of Life.' Beneath this the text in two 47-line columns. B.M. Satires 4269. Removed, according to the Guildhall Library catalogue (in which it appears separately), from the Oxford Magazine, 1768. Only the British Library copy of the separate page is listed on COPAC. It includes suggestions both radical and conservative, legal, constitutional, etc. One clause states: "That you will, . . . be particularly attentive to the Interest of the Manufactures, and the Trade of this Kingdom in all parts of the World, and more especially in the British American Colonies, the only profitable Trade this Kingdom enjoys unrivaled by other nations; for which Purpose we recommend your utmost Endeavours to reconcile the unhappy differences subsisting between the Mother Country and the Colonies . . ." This was published in a period of electoral disturbance, at times involving John Wilkes.