your witness; because you opened her evidence; because you vouched her because you asserted that she was present-because you told us what she saw. And yet you call only her sister, whom you have in your own pay. I say she is your witness; because this is a criminal proceeding; because it is worse than a criminal proceeding; or of a na ture higher at least in its exigency of pure, perfect proof. I say a bill of Pains and Penalties is a measure of such severity, that it ought to be supported by evidence, better, if possible, and stronger, than that which takes away life or limb. I say, she is your witness, and not ours; because we are the defendants, the accused and oppressed by the bill of Pains and Penalties, which does not only accuse, but oppress and seek to overwhelm. She is your witness and not ours; because we stand upon our defence, and we defy you to prove us guilty, and unless you prove our guilt, and until you prove that guilt, we ought not-if justice yet reigns here we ought not to be called upon for a defence. My lords, in a common civil suit, I can comprehend such tactics. I am not bound in claiming a debt, to call, to prove my case, my adversary's servant, or his clerk, or his relation; but if I am placed upon my defence, even for the lowest crime known in the law, pure, unsuspected testimony must be given, whether it is to be derived from one quarter or from another-whether it is to be got from their side or ours. And I will put a case to remind your lordships of this:Suppose a high-way robbery or murder to be alleged to have been

committed, and a man is put upon his trial, and that a Bowstreet officer, panting for his reward, or an accomplice, infamous by his own story, or a spy, degraded by his calling, or any other contaminated, impure, necessarily suspected witness of any description, is alone put forward to prove that charge; and suppose a friend of the defendant were standing by, his servant, or his partner in trade, or any person who is barely competent, by the rules of evidence, to appear as a witness-any person except his wife, who cannot be a witness

I say, no man ought to be put in jeopardy of his life, or be called upon to produce in his defence, that friend, that relation, that servant, unless the case against him has been first proved by unsuspicious testimony. The Queen, my lords, has about her person a sister of Demont. She was placed there by that Demont. She was kept there by the arts of that Demont. She has corresponded with that Demont-they have corresponded in ciphers together, if you are to believe Demont, which I do not. But I take her as described by the case for the accusers; and, under all the circumstances, to justify, nay. to prescribe suspicion, as a duty to her own personal safety, my learned friends yet leave their case short against her, proved by such evidence as I have described to you, or rather as it is painted by the witnesses themselves. They say, "Why do not you call the waiting-woman, Marriette Bron, who is still left by her sister with you?" My lords, he who fulmined over Greece, in words of fire, formerly said, and I would repeat it, and remind

your lordships of it, and implore you not to take it in my own words, but to recollect the words that fell from him, in which he imprinted on his countrymen, that instead of all outworks, all fortifications or ramparts, which a man can throw up to protect the feeble, the best security which the feeble have against the fraudful and the powerful, is that mistrust which nature, for wise purposes, to defend the innocent against the strong and the cunning, has implanted in the bosom of all human kind. It is alien to the innocent nature; but it is one of the misfortunes to which in nocence, by persecution, is subject to, to be obliged to harbour mistrust, while it is surrounded by agents so little scrupulous as the Grimms and Omptedas, with agents so still less scrupulous, as Majoochi, Sacchi, and Demont.

My lords; I am satisfied in my own mind-I have no doubt that all who hear me will agree with me, that we are not bound to call that witness. I am confident that we might have appealed to the principles which I have now reminded your lord ships of, and have at once left the case as it stands, without calling that woman. But her majesty has yet seen no reason to part with a faithful servant. Whatever we may suspect whatever the story of Demont might have taught to believe probable-her sister Mariette shall appear at your lordships'

bar.

My lords (said Mr. Brougham) I have another remark to make, before I leave this case. I have heard it said, by some acute sifters of evidence, "Oh! you have damaged the witnesses, but

only by proving perjury, by proving falsehoods indeed, in unimportant particulars." I need only remind your lordships, that this is an observation which can only come from the lay part of the community. Any lawyer at once will see how ridiculous, if I may so speak, such an objection must always be. If I am to confirm the testimony of an accomplice-if I am to set up an informer-no doubt my confirmation ought to extend to matters connected with the crime-no doubt it must be an important particular that it will avail me to prove by way of confirmation. But it is quite the reverse in respect to pulling down a perjured witness, or a witness suspected of swearing falsely. It is quite enough if he perjure himself in any part, to take away all credit from the whole of his testimony. Can it be said, that you are to pick and choose that you are to believe part, and reject the rest as false? You may-if you are convinced the part you believe is true, notwithstanding other parts which you do not believe; those parts not being falsely stated wilfully by him, but parts which you do not believe, because he may have been ignorant of or may have forgotten them. In this sense, you may choose-culling the part you believe, and separating the part you think contradicted. But if one part is not only not true-is not only not consistent with the fact, but is falsely sworn, in other words, a lie, there is no safety for mankind, for life or honour, if such a witness is to be credited.

My lords, I am told that the situation of life in which Bergami, since promoted to be the

Queen's chamberlain, originally moved, that that sphere of life, compared with the fortune which has since attended him in her service, is of itself matter of suspicion. Let me, however, remind your lordships, that the rapidity of the promotion of Bergami has been greatly overstated; and the manner in which it took place is a convincing proof, that the story of love having been the cause of it, is inconsistent with the fact. Believe Majoochi and Demont, and three weeks after Bergami's arrival in the household, he was promoted to her bed. How was it with respect to the board? Because, after that, he continued in the situation of courier; he dined with the servants, and lived not even with the chamberlains; certainly not, for they were at her table, as usual. He continued to dine with the servants at Genoa; notwithstanding Majoochi's story, it is proved to your lordships that he did not dine with her. He continued as a courier, even after he had once sat at her majesty's table by accident. This is not the rapidity of pace with which love promotes his favoite votaries; but he was a man of merit, as your lordship shall hear in evidence-his father was a proprietor of moderate income, in the north of Italy. He had got into difficulties, as happened of late years to many of the Italians; and his son had sold his estate in order to pay his father's debts.

Mr. Brougham then went on to speak of the familiar terms upon which Bergami lived with his former master general Pino, and to state, that he was specially recommended to the Queen

as a person deserving of protection and promotion by the marquis Ghisiliari, chamberlain to the emperor of Austria.

In conclusion, Mr. Brougham observed, that as the conduct of the Queen had been so severely scrutinized, and as it was important to show that where guilt had not existed, even impropriety could not be proved, he had thought it right to say so much of the circumstances of Bergami. If the Queen had frequented company below her proper station, if she had been proved to have committed any guiltless unworthiness, he could have stood notwithstanding upon high ground indeed; but he had no occasion to stand upon it; guilt there was none-levity there was none-unworthiness there was none had there been any of the latter, he might have appealed upon a ground which always supports virtue in jeopardy,―the course of her former life at home, while she enjoyed the protection of the late King. In his hand he held a testimonial from that beloved prince, which he was sure could not be read without the deepest sense of its importance, and the deepest sorrow that he who wrote it had been no longer spared. The plainness and honesty, and intelligible manly sense of this letter (said the learned gentleman), is such, that I cannot refrain from the gratification of reading it. It was written in 1804

"Windsor Castle, Nov. 13th, 1804. "My dearest Daughter-in-law and Niece;-Yesterday I and the rest of my family, had an interview with the prince of Wales at Kew. Care was

taken on all sides to avoid all subjects of altercation or explanation; consequently the conversation was neither

injured in their credit. How, I again ask, my lords, is a plot ever to be discovered, except by the means of these two principles? Nay, there are instances, in which plots have been discovered, through the medium of the second principle, when the first had happened to fail. When venerable witnesses have been seen to be brought forward, when persons above all suspicion have lent themselves for a season to impure plans, when nothing seemed possible, when no resource for the guiltless seemed open-they have almost providentially escaped from the snare by the second of those two principles; by the evidence breaking down where it was not expected to be sifted, by a weak point being found, where no pains, from not foreseeing the attack, had been made to support it. Your lordships recollect that great passage-I say great, for it is poetically just and eloquentin the Sacred Writings, where the Elders had joined themselves, two of them, in a plot which had appeared to have succeeded, "for that," as the Scriptures say, "they had hardened their hearts, and had turned away their eyes, that they might not look at Heaven, and that they might do the purposes of unjust judgments." But they, though giving a clear, consistent, uncontradicted story, were disappointed, and their victim was rescued from their gripe, by the trifling circumstance of a contradiction about a mastich tree. Let no man call those contradictions or those falsehoods which false witnesses swear to from needless falsehood, such as Sacchi about his changing his name, or such as Demont about her letters, or such as Majoochi about the

banker's clerk, or such as all the others belonging to the other witnesses not going to the main body of the case, but to the main body of the credit of the witnesses-let not man rashly and blindly call those accidents.-They are dispensations of that Providence, which wills not that the guilty should triumph, and which favourably protects the innocent.

Such, my lords, is this case now before you! Such is the Evidence in support of this measure-inadequate to prove a debt

impotent to deprive of a civil right-ridiculous to convict of the lowest offence-scandalous if brought forward to support a charge of the highest nature which the law knows-monstrous to ruin the honour of an English Queen! What shall I say, then, if this is their case-if this is the species of proof by which an act of judicial legislation, an ex post facto law, is sought to be passed against this defenceless woman? My lords, I pray your lordships to pause. You are standing upon the brink of a precipice. It will go forth your judgment, if it goes against the Queen. But it will be the only judgment you ever will pronounce which will fail in its object, and return upon those who give it. Save the country, my lords, from the horrors of this catastrophe-save yourselves from this situation-rescue that country, of which you are the ornaments, but in which you could flourish no longer, when severed from the people, than the blossom when cut off from the root and the stem of the tree. Save that country, that you may continue to adorn it-save the Crown, which is in jeopardythe Aristocracy which is shaken