she gave to the first address that was presented to her? There she declared that, conscious of her innocence, she was ready to meet her accusers, but she did not wish her case to mix with public politics. I do not say this, my Lords, to prejudice your minds for a single instant against the illustrious individual whose case is now before the House. But, my Lords, if you believe her guilty, and yet reject the bill, as I said before, it will be the triumph of guilt over truth and justice. Let me beseech you, then, to suffer no threat or fear to deter you from doing that duty which you are bound here to perform, according to the dictates of your consciences. With respect to the personal appeal which the noble Earl opposite has made to me, I desire to say, that I have looked into the conduct of other persons who have been in my situation upon bills and measures of a similar nature, and I do not find that it was on those occasions thought consistent with public duty, or consistent with the rights of a peer, upon a public measure to abstain from giving their opinions or votes. This doctrine applied to impeachment at the bar of this House, and I think it applies to the present case. I remember when the father of a noble friend who sits near me was some years ago impeached at the bar of this House; the King's Attorney and Solicitor-General conducted the prosecution; the ministers brought it forward; and yet the noble Lords who then held office in the government did not in any degree think themselves precluded from voting. I say that in substance the present case is the same. I say, that upon so important a question, and on so great and public a measure, I will not preclude myself from expressing my opinion, nor will I divest myself of my right as a peer to assert my opinion, and to support it by my vote. I will rely on my own honour, feelings, and integrity, to guide me to that which is right; and I will rely on the public to do me justice in believing that I act conscientiously and honestly. To conclude, we have, my Lords, now to discharge most undoubtedly a high and important duty. We come now to a decision, in which, I hope and trust, your votes will not be influenced by fear, affection, or interest and I trust and believe, every peer will give his vote from the bottom of his heart, according to the best of his judgment, and in fulfilment of the dictates of his conscience. I will not believe I never can believe that the country will not do justice to your decision. I have the highest confidence in the country that they will reverence your decision, and I am sure the country reposes its fullest confidence in the integrity of this tribunal. You are, however, my Lords, a tribunal that, like all other tribunals, stands before the greater tribunal of public opinion, and by your acts you will be judged. But if you give an honest vote upon this subject, whatever it may be, the public will do you justice, and will feel that vote has been given according to the best of your judgment, and in strict obedience to the dictates of your conscience. Allusions have been made by the noble Lord opposite, to the judges of the land. I know not to what he refers: but without adverting to that circumstance, I will say it gives me the highest satisfaction that this trial proceeds in the presence of the judges of the land. It gives me also great satisfaction that after this trial sis closed, we debate the question in the presence of those judges. I am

sure they have been to us of the greatest assistance in determining points of law; and I think it highly proper that we have their aid. Heaven grant your decision may be such as will satisfy the ends of justice and vindicate the cause of truth!-Heaven grant it may be such as will bear the test of judgment here and hereafter; that in pronouncing your decision you may safely appeal for the truth of your judgment to that Being to whom alone the secrets of all hearts are open. And when, at the last day, we shall render an account at the tribunal of Eternal Justice, we may feel warranted in our conduct here, and know we have administered justice in mercy, without pronouncing a harsher judgment, or a severer punishment, than is absolutely necessary, doing right between the Queen, the public, and our God." (Earl of Liverpool's Speech, p. 26-30.)

The publication entitled "Selections from the Queen's Answers to various Addresses presented to her," which is one of the list at the top of our article, is a compilation of great singularity and curiosity. There is no doubt that many of the answers here recorded contain aphorisms of unquestionable certainty and importance on the side of constitutional freedom; the point is, are they connected with the Queen's cause? And is the violation of them, or of any of them in regard to the Queen's person, a gratuitous and baseless assumption, or a fair ostensible deduction from facts? Into this question, on the margin of which we have all along been treading, we must still refuse to embark; but as demonstrations of a spirit of profound intrigue and contrivance to extract from every event what revolutionary virtue it may contain, we think we may, consistently with our plan in this article, bestow on them a little attention. That they are not the lucubrations of her Majesty is beyond all controversy clear; it would be silly to ask whether they contain her sentiments: they have been fabricated, like any other manufactured article, to answer a special purpose; and her interest in them goes no further than to their suitableness to her immediate occasion. Of the composition she probably neither knows nor cares any thing. One can only wonder at her unreserved abandonment of her cause to persons who have far other interests than her own to serve; who have divorced that cause for ever from the great and indispensable maxims of public safety, and suspended it upon the ominous success of revolutionary projects. Of the orbit of a King's consort the throne can be the only proper centre. Shooting out of this sphere it is impossible for her to find her element elsewhere, or to rush into harmony with any other system, especially in regions beyond the walk of human discovery, amidst the vortices and eccentricities of democratic speculation. Of the shame and scandal of these answers to addresses, the Queen is only a negative participant, by permitting them to go forth in her name. The probability is, that few of them have

been offered to her perusal; and we wish to think that only the approved by her as the models The three first contain the fol

two or three first were seen and of those which were to succeed. lowing sentiments.

"The Common Council of London, 16th June.

"If any thing could lessen the grief which I must still feel for the loss of those dear relations, of whom I have been deprived since I left England, it would be the proofs I now receive upon my return that their memories are cherished as their virtues deserved. In the new trials to which I am exposed, my first duty is to vindicate myself, and my next wish is to see nothing attempted that may hurt the feelings of others.

"But in all the troubles through which I have passed, the generous attachment of the English people has been my safe-guard against the King's enemies and my own; and be well assured that no time can ever weaken the grateful impressions of such obligations."

"Nottingham, 30th June.

Sincerely as I must ever deplore the distresses that may fall on any of my fellow-subjects, I must decline to speculate upon their probable causes, or to cast reproaches upon their supposed authors. Having come to this country for my own vindication, I cannot mix political animosities with my just cause.

"My fervent prayers will be constantly offered up to the throne of mercy for the happiness and prosperity of the whole English people; and there is no portion of them for whom I feel a livelier interest than the inhabitants of Nottingham."

"Preston, 3d July.

"The object of my coming here has been the vindication of my honour; and I shall perform the sacred duty which I owe alike to the country and to myself, without making myself a party to the political divisions which exist."

Now, if these were really the first feelings of the Queen's mind on her return to this country, and the sentiments expressed in the answers to subsequent addresses were also really her own, we can only lament that, in the sequel, she should have so apostatized from her early professions, or fallen under the influence of such bad counsels. But if, with an understanding that all succeeding answers to succeeding addresses were to breathe the same innoxious spirit and the same prudence of political reserve, she cast the whole business of framing these answers upon others, without personal knowledge of their contents, we can only exclaim, that there lives not a more insulted being,—a more pitia-ble victim of treachery, than the Queen of England.

Had every answer been of the same character as the three which we have produced, and her conduct been consistent with those answers, resolute without defiance, retiring without timidity, displaying the firm aspect of integrity, and rejecting

adventitious support from passion, delusion, or depraved ambition, the hearts of the good and the brave, the moral and religious of the land would have been touched with a generous sympathy for their unhappy Queen;-her failings and miscarriages would have been half forgotten, half discredited, and all forgiven by the nation. But, unhappily, the very reverse of all this has been the course adopted. The Queen's case was soon perceived by the ill-disposed part of the country to be rich in capabilities; they saw in it the means of insulting their Sovereign, annoying the government, aspersing the nobility, and throwing ridicule and contempt upon the clergy. It is not necessary to confirm this observation by examples-they are in every body's recollection. Every reader of the newspapers will remember that tissue of inflammatory appeals to the populace, of which the answer to the address of the operative classes of London may be taken as a pretty good specimen, where we have the following memorable passage,

"There have been times, and perhaps those times may still be, when the hard-earned bread of the long toiling peasant or mechanic is insufficient for his numerous family; when the penury has been succeeded by the inquietude of the night, and when night and day, day and night have been only a sad succession of pining wretchedness, and of hopeless woe. That order of things, which in a large portion of the community necessitates the acquisition of subsistence by the sweat of the brow, is the institution of Providence for the benefit of man; but who does not see that it is not owing to the wisdom of the Deity, but to the hard-heartedness of the oppressor, when the sweat of the brow during the day is followed by the tear of affliction at its close; when the labour of the hand only adds to the aching of the heart; and what ought to be a source of joy is an aggravation of calamity. But if these things have been, I may perhaps be permitted to hope that they will, ere long, be only as the troubled scenery of a dream; and that happier times are approaching, when commerce will crowd our rivers, trade be busy in our streets, and industry smiling in our fields."

The above bombastical, hypocritical, and dangerous cant, may be taken as a fair average sample of the style and tone of these compositions dispersed over the country in a time of unusual difficulties in the agricultural and trading classes, the unavoidable consequences of a long war in itself unavoidable,→ from which it may be seen how fully by this time the full value of the Queen's case was understood, as affording a principle as active as the power of steam to set in motion the machinery of the passions, and to transmit and distribute its impulse into whatever may be the direction given it by the diversified agency and multiplied occasions of mischief. After all, perhaps, the real reason of the difference observable be

tween the three first and the succeeding answers to addresses, may be found in the difference between those legal advisers to whom the Queen submitted her earliest acts after her return to these shores, and those more decided men who have conducted her across that rubicon, beyond which all restraints of queenly policy, or feminine reserve were to give place to higher thoughts, and a bolder career of enterprize.

The Letter to the King, which is introduced at the end of this pamphlet, and which may be regarded as the great state paper or proclamation of the party to whom her Majesty has committed her cause, is now, we believe, considered as a document of great indiscretion by even that party itself. By this letter, the eyes of all were opened to the scope and purpose to which her case was to be expanded; and more wrong was done the Queen! by this than by any other transaction which has been covered by her name. There is assuredly decorum of sentiment enough in the British mind rightly to appreciate the character of an interference calculated to inflame animosities between man and wife, aggravated by the circumstance of that man and wife being the King and Queen of the country. If ever there was a hope of exterior reconcilement, or of a treaty that might cicatrize a wound in which every bosom of feeling participates, this was the method of all that could have been devised the best adapted to disappoint that hope, and to perpetuate the nation's sorrow. "This was the most unkindest cut of all;" for it cut asunder the last silver thread by which charity, when all peculiar ties are gone, still holds us together in the intercourse of general benevolence. There is scarcely any composition in the language of which a humane or Christian person would feel himself less capable of being the author, than of this unjust and oppro¬ brious epistle.

We will not enter into any particular consideration of the letter in question. It has been sufficiently examined and weighed by the reflecting part of the nation. One passage alone compels us, by its peculiar malignity and dishonesty, to throw away a remark upon it. The letter alludes to a passage in the letter of the King, written in April, 1796, in which his Majesty, then Prince of Wales, thus expressed himself:-" Our inclinations are not in our power, nor should either of us be held amenable to the other; because Nature has not made us suitable to each other. Tranquil and comfortable society is, however, in our power," &c. By the above passage, it is most obviously clear that nothing more was meant than that the Prince found it impossible to bestow his affection on the Princess, his inclinations not being within his controul,-not surely that his inclina tions had migrated to any other object, which would, indeed, have been but a licentious excuse for his dissatisfaction with his