INTRODUCTION.

QUEEN CAROLINE was at all times extremely averse to Prosecutions for Libel. She had early in her life, that is to say, soon after the course of her persecutions commenced, well considered the subject, and become aware of the extremely unsatisfactory state of our law regarding the offences of the press. The result of all her reflection and observation upon the subject was, that the submitting to slander was the lesser evil, and that legal proceedings only made the injury more severe, by giving the invectives a more extensive circulation. She felt that, by prosecuting a libel, she lent herself to the designs of the slanderer, and suffered so much the more, only in order that others might be deterred from publishing their calumnies against other individuals, probably against her enemies themselves. Add to this, that she was of a fearless nature, and never doubted that the efforts of malice would fail to affect her general reputation.

This aversion to all penal proceedings was certainly not diminished by the trial before the Lords, if a word usually consecrated to the administration of justice may be prostituted to describe the case of 1820, in which it would be hard to say whether greater violence was done to the forms of justice, or a more entire disregard shown to its substance. She had been kept many months in a state of annoyance and vexation, of irritation and suspense, during those shameful proceedings, which, regulated by no principles known in

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courts of law, were calculated to affright the person most conscious of innocence, and to make every observer feel that the event depended as little upon the real merits of the case, as any division in either House of Parliament upon a party question turns upon the soundness of the arguments advanced in the debate, or the personal qualities of the different speakers. She was compelled to bear with her advisers, while they were discussing the propriety of prosecuting the perjured witnesses, although she felt rather relieved than disappointed when it was found that technical difficulties stood in the way of any such course being taken. But she had a very decided aversion to going before the legal tribunals, and being involved in a lengthened litigation, well knowing how unsatisfactory the result might prove, and how little likely a conviction was to silence the calumniators, who were hired and set on by a Court wholly unscrupulous in using the strong influence which it possessed over the press, and the ample resources of corruption placed at its disposal. After the tempestuous scene through which she had just passed, tranquillity was the object of all her wishes; and she felt confident that her conduct would be rightly appreciated by the country at large, how active soever her unprincipled adversaries might be in the dissemination of their slanders. Her wishes accordingly prevailed; and the consequence was, that the press was polluted with a degree of malignity and impurity before wholly unknown. Newspapers that used formerly to maintain some character for liberality towards political adversaries, became the daily and weekly vehicles of personal abuse against all who took the Queen's part. Journals which had never suffered their pages to be defiled by calumnies against individuals, nor ever had invaded the privacy of domestic life for the unworthy purpose of inflicting pain upon the families of political enemies, devoted their columns to the reception of scandal against men,

and even women, who happened to be connected with the Queen's supporters. As if the publications already established were too few for the slanderer's purpose, or too scrupulous in lending themselves to his views, new papers were established with the professed object of maintaining a constant war against all who espoused her Majesty's cause. Nay, it was enough that any persons, of any age or of either sex, held any intercourse whatever with that illustrious Princess, to make their whole life and conversation the subject of unsparing severity and unmeasured and unmanly vituperation. A single error, far short of fault, once detected, was made the nucleus round which were gathered all the falsehoods which a slanderous and malignant fury could invent; and the defects of the law being well known to those who had studied them in order to evade its sanctions, little fear was entertained of the propagation of those falsehoods being visited with punishment, as long as any the least imperfection existed in any one's conduct, which could not be denied upon oath. In one respect, the whole thing was so much overdone, that it failed to produce its full effect. Slander, like everything else, may be made so abundant as to lose its value. Fierce and indiscriminate calumnies daily and weekly circulated in journals, and in pamphlets, and in private society, began to lose their relish, and to pall upon the appetite which, by loading it to excess, they ceased to provoke. After a little while people began to care very much less for these attacks; they seemed to be considered as matters of course; and it was found that the Press had lost the greater part of its power as regarded invectives or imputations. Nay, so many things were published, notoriously without the least foundation, that the truths which from time to time became mixed with the falsehoods, shared the same fate, and all were disbelieved alike; nor did persons of indifferent life and doubtful fame fail to feel the comforts of their

new position, kept in countenance as they now were by the most respected individuals, whose hitherto unassailed character was as much the prey of the prevailing malignant epidemic, as their own more frail reputations. Thus the press not only ceased to have its appropriate effect of encouraging virtue and controlling vice, but it operated as some little annoyance to the good, while it cherished and protected the bad: all men perceiving that the purest life was no kind of security against its assaults, while it confounded the licentious with the blameless, causing its showers to fall alike on the just and the unjust.

To the Queen's resolution against prosecuting her slanderers, her advisers adhered throughout with one remarkable exception. A reverend clergyman of the Established Church thought fit, in the discharge of his sacred duties, to preach a sermon abounding in the most gross scurrility. The main subject of his attack was her Majesty's going in procession to St. Paul's Cathedral, where she attended divine service in the month of November, to offer up thanks for her providential deliverance from her enemies; and was surrounded by countless thousands of the people, her steady and unflinching supporters. The wonderful spectacle which the great capital of the empire exhibited on that remarkable occasion, has never perhaps been adequately described. But it perhaps may be better understood if we add, that those who witnessed the extraordinary pomp of her present Majesty's visit to the Guildhall Banquet in November, 1837, and who also recollect the far more simple and unbought grandeur of the former occasion, treat any comparison between the two as altogether ridiculous. When Queen Caroline went to celebrate her triumph, and to thank God for "giving her the victory over all her enemies," the eye was met by no troops-no body guards-no vain profusion of wealth-no costly equipages-no gorgeous attire-no heaving up of gold

no pride of heraldry-no pomp of power, except indeed the might that slumbered in the arms of myriads ready to die in her defence. But in place of all this, there was that which the late solemnity wanted -a real occasion. It was the difference between makebelieve and reality-between play and work-between representation and business-between the drama and the deed. When the young Queen moved through the crowd of her subjects, she saw thousands of countenances lit up with hope, and beaming with good-will, and hundreds of thousands of faces animated with mere curiosity. Queen Caroline had been oftentimes seen by all who then beheld her; she had been long known to them; her whole life had but recently been the subject of relentless scrutiny; hope from her of any kind there was none. All that she was ever likely to do, she had already done; but she had been despitefully used and persecuted; she had faced her enemies and defied their threats-dared them to the combat, and routed them with disgrace. In her person justice had triumphed; the people had stood by her, and had shared in her immortal victory. The solemnity of November, 1820, was the celebration of that great event, and although they who partook of it had no sordid interests to pursue, no selfish feeling of any kind to gratify; although they were doing an act that instead of winning any smile from royalty, drew down the frowns of power, and were steering counter to the stream of court favour, adown which Englishmen, of all people in the world, are the most delighted to glide; yet the occasion was one of such real feeling, so much the commemoration of a real and a great event, and the display of practical and determined feelings pointed to so precisely defined and important an object, that its excitement baffles all description, and cannot be easily comprehended by those who only witnessed the comparatively tame and unmeaning pageant of November, 1837.

In the proportion of its interest to the people at