A.D. 1820.]

THE QUEEN'S STATEMENT.

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Marlborough house, or any other palace is refused me, [ shall take a house in the country, till my friends can find a palace for me in London. I have sent a messenger to England to make the proper arrangements for that purpose."

The queen feelingly alludes to the same subject in her reply to the address from Westminster, presented by its representatives, Sir Francis Burdett and Mr. Hobhouse. She said :—

"It is now seven years since I received an address from the inhabitant householders of Westminster, in which they congratulated me upon my escape from what they truly described as a nefarious conspiracy against my honour and my life. Upon that occasion my character was exonerated from the load of calumny with which it had been oppressed, though my conduct had undergone only an ex-parte examination, and though I had no means of facing my accusers, or of being heard in my defence.

"The people of England then, almost universally, expressed their approbation of what they considered as the triumph of rectitude and innocence over perfidy and falsehood. From that hour to the present I have been the victim of a similar conspiracy, which has been incited by the same motives, and prosecuted with the same views; though with increased violence, and with aggravated malignity. New and more appalling efforts have been made to destroy that character which had resisted so many former attempts; but I rejoice that I now find, as I at the time found, the people of Westminster uninfluenced by the powerful machinations of my enemies, and animated by the same sentiment which they then expressed, that every subject, until convicted of guilt, had an undoubted right to retain the reputation, the rights, and immunities of innocence.

Caroline of Brunswick. A guard has been refused me as queen, which was granted to me as princess of Wales, because no communication has been received from the British government announcing me as queen. My messenger was refused a passport for England. I also experienced much insult from the court of Turin. Last year, in the month of September (I was then travelling incognito, under the name of the countess of Oldi), I went to the confines of the Austrian estates, to the first small town belonging to the king of Sardinia, in my way to meet Mr. Broughain, at Lyons, as the direct road lay through Turin. I wrote myself to the queen of Sardinia, informing her that I could not remain at Turin, being anxious to reach Lyons as soon as possible, and also that I was travelling incognito. I received no answer to this letter. The postmaster at Bronio, the small post town near the country villa where I then resided, absolutely refused me post horses. In consequence of this refusal I wrote to Mr. Hill, the English minister at Turin, demanding immediate satisfaction, and the reason for such an insult. Mr. Hill excused himself upon the plea of its being a misunderstanding, and told me that post horses would be in readiness whenever I should require them. I accordingly set out, and arranged to go through the town of Turin at night, and only stop to change horses; but I received positive orders not to go through the town, but to proceed by a very circuitous road, which obliged me to travel almost the whole night, in very dangerous roads, and prevented me from reaching the post town (where I should have passed the night) till five in the morning, when, by going through Turin, I might have reached it by ten o'clock at night. Finding so much difficulty attending my travelling, I thought the most proper mode for me to pursue would be to acquaint the high personages of my intention of passing the winter at Lyons, or in the neighbourhood of Lyons, previous to my intended return to England in the spring. I addressed a letter to the French minister for foreign affairs, informing him of my intentions, and also that I wished to preserve the strictest incog-justice or to their humanity. I am convinced that, in this nito. No notice was taken of this letter; and one addressed to the prefect of Lyons met with like contempt. In fact, from the 7th of October to the 26th of January, the day I embarked from Toulon for Leghorn, I received so much insult from the governors and prefect, that I almost considered my life in danger, unprotected as I then was, in such a country. Another motive induced me to leave it. Mr. Brougham could not fix the period for meeting me anywhere in France. I have written to lord Liverpool and lord Castlereagh, demanding to have my name inserted in the liturgy of the church of England, and that orders be given to all British ambassadors, ministers, and consuls, that I should be received and acknowledged as the queen of England; and after the speech made by lord Castlereagh in the house of commons, in answer to Mr. Brougham, I do not expect to experience further insult. I have also demanded that a palace may be prepared for my reception. England is my real home, to which I shall immediately fly. I have dismissed my Italian court, retaining only a sufficient number of persons to conduct me in England; and if Buckingham house,

"In the present perilous crisis of my fate, I am supported by that courage which arises from the consciousness of rectitude; and I feel that the English people will never suffer an injured queen to appeal in vain either to their

land of liberty, no oppression can be practised, and that to be upright is to be secure.

"In the warm desire which the people of Westminster have expressed for the consideration of my honour, they have exhibited a striking testimony of their loyalty to the king; for the honour of his majesty must for ever be identified with that of his queen.

"My first wish is to prove that my character has been unjustly traduced; my next is to terminate my days among the high-minded people of this country, to whose affectionate sympathy I am, at present, indebted for so much of the cheerfulness which I feel, and of the support which I possess, under the pressure of such complicated wrongs, and such accumulated persecutions."

In a letter which she addressed to the king himself, on the 20th of August, she urged the same topic with great force. Alluding to the separation, she said :—

"A sense of what is due to my character and sex forbids me to refer minutely to the real causes of our domestic separation, or to the numerous unmerited insults offered me previously to that period; but, leaving to your majesty

to reconcile with the marriage vow the act of driving by such means a wife from beneath your roof, with an infant in her arms, your majesty will permit me to remind you that that act was entirely your own; that the separation, so far from being sought for by me, was a sentence pronounced upon me, without any cause assigned other than that of your own inclinations, which, as your majesty was pleased to allege, were not under your control."

:

But, alas! even tranquillity and comfort were too much for me to enjoy. From the very threshold of your majesty's mansion the mother of your child was pursued by spies, conspirators, and traitors, employed, encouraged, and rewarded, to lay snares for the feet, and to plot against the reputation and life of her whom your majesty had so recently and so solemnly vowed to honour, to love, and to cherish.

dust, by giving his countenance and favour to the most
conspicuous of those abandoned and notorious perjurers.
"Still there was one whose upright mind nothing could
warp, in whose breast injustice never found a place, whose
hand was always ready to raise the unfortunate, and to
rescue the oppressed. While that good and gracious
father and sovereign remained in the exercise of his royal
functions, his unoffending daughter-in-law had nothing to

In reference to his promise that she should have a tran- fear. As long as the protecting hand of your late ever quil and comfortable home, she proceeded :beloved and ever lamented father was held over me, I was safe. But the melancholy event which deprived the nation of the active exertions of its virtuous king, bereft me of my friend and protector, and of all hope of future tranquillity and safety. To calumniate your innocent wife was now the shortest road to royal favour; and to betray her was to lay the sure foundation to boundless riches and titles of honour. Before claims like these, talent, virtue, long services, your own personal friendships, your royal engagements, promises, and pledges, written as well as verbal, melted into air. Your cabinet was founded on this basis. You took to your councils men of whose persons, as well as whose principles, you had invariably expressed the strongest dislike. The interest of the nation, and even your own feelings, in all other respects, were sacrificed to the gratification of your desire to aggravate my sufferings and insure my humiliation. You took to your councils and your bosom men whom you hated, whose abandonment of and whose readiness to sacrifice me were their only merits, and whose power has been exercised in a manner, and has been attended with consequences, worthy of its origin. From this unprincipled and unnatural union have sprung the manifold evils which this nation has now to endure, and which present a mass of misery and of degradation, accompanied with acts of tyranny and cruelty, rather than have seen which inflicted on his industrious, faithful, and brave people, your royal father would have perished at the head of that people.

"In withdrawing from the embraces of my parents, in giving my hand to the son of George III., and the heir apparent to the British throne, nothing less than a voice from heaven would have made me fear injustice or wrong of any kind. What, then, was my astonishment at finding that treasons against me had been carried on and matured, perjuries against me had been methodised and embodied, a secret tribunal had been held, a trial of my actions had taken place, and a decision had been made upon those actions, without my having been informed of the nature of the charge, or of the names of the witnesses? And what words can express the feelings excited by the fact, that this proceeding was founded on a request made, and on evidence furnished, by order of the father of my child, and my natural as well as legal guardian and protector?

་་

Notwithstanding, however, the unprecedented conduct of that tribunal-conduct which has since undergone, even in parliament, severe and unanswered animadversions, and which has been also censured in minutes of the privy council-notwithstanding the secrecy of the proceedings of this tribunal-notwithstanding the strong temptation to the giving of false evidence against me before it notwithstanding that there was no opportunity afforded me of rebutting that evidence-notwithstanding all these circumstances, so decidedly favourable to my enemies-even this secret tribunal acquitted me of all crime, and thereby pronounced my principal accusers to have been guilty of the grossest perjury. But it was now (after the trial was over) discovered that the nature of the tribunal was such as to render false swearing before it not legally criminal! And thus, at the suggestion and request of your majesty, had been created, to take cognisance of, and try my conduct, a tribunal, competent to administer oaths, competent to examine witnesses on oath, competent to try, competent to acquit or condemn, and competent, moreover, to screen those who had sworn falsely against me from suffering the pains and penalties which the law awards to wilful and corrupt perjury. Great as my indignation naturally must have been at this shameful evasion of law and justice, that indignation was lost in pity for him who could lower his princely plumes to the

"When to calumniate, revile, and betray me became the sure path to honour and riches, it would have been strange, indeed, if calumniators, revilers, and traitors had not abounded. Your court became much less a scene of polished manners and refined intercourse than of low intrigue and scurrility. Spies, bacchanalian tale-bearers, and foul conspirators swarmed in those places which had been before the resort of sobriety, virtue, and honour. To enumerate all the various privations and mortifications which I had to endure, all the insults that were wantonly heaped upon me, from the day of your elevation to the regency to that of my departure for the continent, would be to describe every species of personal offence that can be offered to, and every pain short of bodily violence that can be inflicted on, any human being. Bereft of parent, brother, and father-in-law, and my husband for my deadliest foe-seeing those who have promised me support bought by rewards to be amongst my enemies-restrained from accusing my foes in the face of the world, out of regard for the character of the father of my child, and from a desire to prevent her happiness from being disturbed-shunned, from motives of selfishness, by those who were my natural associates-living in obscurity, while

I ought to have been the centre of all that was splendid: thus humbled, I had one consolation left-the love of my dear and only chill. To permit me to enjoy this was too great an indulgence. To see my daughter, to fold her in my arms, to mingle my tears with hers, to receive her cheering caresses, and to hear from her lips assurances of never-ceasing love-thus to be comforted, consoled, upheld, and blessed, was too much to be allowed me. Even on the slave-mart the eries of Oh, my mother! my mother! oh, my child!' have prevented a separation of the victims of avarice. But your advisers, more inhuman than the slave-dealers, remorselessly tore the mother from the child.

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produced in reply-I say again, laying aside all evidence liable to suspicion, or which has been contradicted, does the unimpeached testimony which has been produced on the one side-connected with the positive testimony and the negative testimony, or want of evidence which might have been produced on the other-support the allegation of an adulterous intercourse, or does it not?

"The course which I shall take is of this nature; and I am now about to state. the opinion which, after the most painful and anxious attention, that course compels me to form. I apprehend, then-at least, my lords, so it seems to me-that if we look at one or two of the cases or circumstances which have been proved at your lordships' bar by witnesses entirely beyond suspicion, to whom suspicion has never attached during the whole of these proceedings; and if we then look at the situation and history of the person with whom the act of adultery is alleged to have been committed, it appears to me, from this view of the subject-I am very sorry to say it, but I cannot shrink from the duty of saying it-that we cannot possibly draw any other inference but that there has been an adulterous intercourse.

Thus bereft of the society of my child, or reduced to the necessity of embittering her life by struggles to preserve that society, I resolved on a temporary absence, in the hope that time might restore me to her in happier days. Those days, alas! were never to come. To mothers, and those mothers who have been suddenly bereft of the best and most affectionate and only daughter, it belongs to estimate my sufferings and my wrongs. Such mothers will judge of my affliction upon hearing of the leath of my child, and upon my calling to recollection "My lords, with respect to the negative evidence of the the last look, the last words, and all the affecting circum- bill-the want of contradiction to the evidence in support stances of our separation. Such mothers will see the of the bill-it is my duty to say that I have frequently depth of my sorrows. Every being, with a heart of thought more effect. has been given than ought to humanity in his bosom, will drop a tear in sympathy with have been given in what is called the summing-up of a inc.. And will not the world, then, learn with indignation judge on a trial, to the fact that there has not been the that this event, calculated to soften the hardest heart, was contradiction on the part of the defence, which it is supthe signal for new conspiracies and indefatigable efforts for posed the witnesses for the accusation might have receive 1 ; the destruction of this afflicted mother? Your majesty for, my lords, we ought to look at the circumstances of had torn my child from me; you had deprived me of the the case in which this absence of contradiction occurs. It power of being at hand to succour her; you had taken may often happen that, in the course of a trial, circumfrom me the possibility of hearing of her last prayers for stances are proved which have no bearing on the real her mother; you saw me bereft, forlorn, and broken-question at issue; and it may also happen that facts are hearted; and this was the moment you chose for re- alleged and sworn to by witnesses which it is impossible doubling your persecutions.

"Let the world pass its judgment on the constituting of a commission, in a foreign country, consisting of inquisitors, spies, and informers, to discover, collect, and arrange matters of accusation against your wife, without any complaint having been communicated to her; let the world julge of the employment of ambassadors in such a business, and of the enlisting of foreign courts in the terprise: but on the measures which have been adopted to give final effect to these preliminary proceedings, it is for me to speak, it is for me to remonstrate with your jesty it is for me to protest, it is for me to apprise you of my determination.”

The conduct of lord Eldon, as president of the august esurt, is admitted to have been dignified, if not wholly impartial. The summing up in his speech on the second reading was very able. He said:-"But, my lords, the ground of the opinion which I am about to state to your lordships is this:-Laying aside all the testimony in this case which ean by possibility be suspected, I ask myself this question -Does the unsuspected evidence which has been produced in support of this bill, and does the testimony which has been produced in reply, together with the negative evidence or the want of that evidence which might have been

for the accused party to contradict; circumstances may be
stated by witnesses which are untrue, yet they cannot be
contradicted, because the party injured by them, not
expecting that that which never had any existence would
be attempted to be proved, cannot be prepared with oppos-
ing witnesses. So, also, in cases in which an individual
witness speaks to occurrences at which no other person
was present but himself, there it may be absolutely
impossible to contradict him. But, my lords, in a case in
which the facts sworn to by a witness are sworn to have
occurred in the presence of many individuals (which we
know to be the case in the present instance) who are
within the reach of the party whose interest it is to con-
tradict such testimony, are not produced, then the want of
that contradiction becomes a matter of great importance,
and for many reasons. I have no right to impute to a y
man that he has given false or perjured testimony whea
other persons were present at the period to which his
testimony refers, whom I have the power to call, but whom
I decline calling. Unless I call those persons to contra liet
the witness, he is clearly entitled to credit.
In my
opinion, such a circumstance is a tacit admission of the
fact by those whose interest it is to contest and deny it.
If they do not contradict the fact by testimony which they

MR. BROUGHAM'S SPEECH FOR THE DEFENCE.