destructive of its strength. Our military system in general, he admires in common with us all; he animadverts upon a taint and not upon its essence; upon a blot which disfigures it, and not upon a part of its structure. He wishes you to remove an excrescence which may be pulled away without loosening the foundation; and the rest will appear the fairer, and remain so much the sounder and more secure. You are now, gentlemen, to say by your verdict whether the mere reading of this publication,-taking all its parts together,-not casting aside its limitations. and qualifications, but taking it as it appears in this paper-you are now to say, whether the mere perusal of it in this shape is likely to produce those effects which have been described by the counsel for the prosecution,-effects which have never yet been produced by the infliction of the punishment itself. This consideration, gentlemen, seems to deserve your very best attention. If you can say aye to this, you will then bring your verdict against the defendant,and not only against him, but against me, his advocate, who have spoken to you much more freely than he has done, and against those gallant officers who have so ably condemned the practice which he condemns,— and against the country which loudly and rightfully demands an attention to its best interests,-and against the stability of the British Constitution. INTRODUCTION. UNDER the superintendence of counsellors not in office, but probably looking towards it, the Commission to procure evidence against the Queen proceeded at Milan; and there is no occasion to characterize the fruits of its inquiries otherwise than as they have been described in colours which, though they may be strong, are only so because they are strong enough to retain their likeness to the original they represent. "The Milan Commission proceeded under this superintendence; and as its labours so were their fruits exactly what might have been expected. It is the first impression always arising from any work undertaken by English hands and paid for by English money, that an inexhaustible fund is employed, and with boundless profusion; and a thirst of gold is straightway excited which no extravagance of liberality can slake. The knowledge that a board was sitting to collect evidence against the Queen, immediately gave such testimony a high value in the market of Italian perjury; and happy was the individual who had ever been in her house or admitted to her presence: his fortune was counted to be made. Nor were they who had viewed her mansion, or had only known the arrangements of her villa, without hopes of sharing in the golden prize. To have seen her pass, and noticed who attended her person, was a piece of good luck. In short, nothing, however remotely connected with herself, or her family, or her residence, or her habits, was without its value among a poor, a sanguine, and an imaginative people. It is certain that no more ready way of proving a case, like the charge of criminal intercourse, can be found, than to have it first broadly asserted for a fact; because this being once believed, every motion, gesture, and look is at once taken as proof of the accusation, and the two most innocent of human beings may be overwhelmed with a mass of circumstances, almost all of which, as well as the inferences drawn from them, are really believed to be true by those who recount or record them. As the treachery of servants was the portion of this testimony which bore the highest value, that, of course, was not difficult to procure; and the accusers soon possessed what, in such a case, may most truly be said to be accusatori maxime optandum—not, indeed, confitentes reos, but the man-servant of the one, and the maid-servant of the other supposed paramour. Nor can we look back upon these scenes without some little wonder how they should not have added even the confitentem reum; for surely in a country so fertile of intriguing men and abandoned women,-where false oaths, too, grow naturally, or with only the culture of a gross ignorance and a superstitious faith,-it might have been easy, we should imagine, to find some youth, like Smeatton in the original Harry the Eighth's time, ready to make his fortune, both in money and female favours, by pretending to have enjoyed the affections of one whose good nature and easy manners made the approach to her person no difficult matter at any time. This defect in the case can only be accounted for by supposing that the production of such a witness before the English public might have appeared somewhat perilous, both to himself and to the cause he was brought to prop with his perjuries. Accordingly, recourse was had to spies, who watched all the parties did, and when they could not find a circumstance, would make one; men who chronicled the dinners and the suppers that were eaten, the walks and the sails |