the law of Edward III., have claimed even before that House-denied those advantages, an equivalent at some stage became absolutely necessary, in order to enable her Majesty to enter upon her defence with that power, which the law of England granted even to the meanest culprit-the power of doing justice to her innocence, if innocent she was. The equivalent was necessary; the equivalent was promised; and the question was now, in what manner it should be given? He was convinced that the learned counsel would not abuse the privilege demanded by him; and seeing only a choice of evils, occasioned by the course recommended by the noble Lords opposite, and adopted by the House, he thought the least was incurred by granting this privilege. He did ask the House, whether, in the spirit of English law, or in the spirit of universal justice, upon any principle of common humanity or compassion, they could subject the accused to that disadvantage, and give every advantage to the accuser? Or whether they ought not to respect that humane principle of English law, which surrounded the accused on every side with protection, and cast disadvantage, if disadvantage must be the lot of one, upon the side of the accuser?

The Earl of Liverpool admitted that there were evils on both sides, and if these had been equal, the benefit ought to be granted to her Majesty. He conceived, however, the inconvenience on one side to be beyond all comparison greater than on the other. Whatever inconvenience the Queen might sustain from a refusal of the list, that inconvenience would be incomparably less than that which would result, not only to the particular case in question, but to the general course of justice, from that application being granted. If

this proceeding were allowed, learned counsel (and he here applied counsel generally) might open a case on false information, which they possessed no means of proving or verifying. Their Lordships might have an imaginary case stated before them, without any evidence whatsoever to support it. What, then, was the difference between a case going forth, together with the evidence on which it was founded, and a statement going forth, without any means of ascertaining how it would be supported? In the one case they had the evidence with the statement; in the other, they had a statement without any evidence at all, much less with any evidence capable of cross-examination, or being sifted in any way whatsoever.

The Chancellor then proposed the following resolution:

"That the counsel be called in, and be informed that, if they now proceed to state the case on the part of her Majesty, they must, at the close of that statement, if they mean to produce evidence, be prepared to produce the whole of their proofs in support of the case stated by them; but that the House will, at their request, if they are not ready to take this course, adjourn to such reasonable time as the counsel for her Majesty may propose before their case is stated, that an opportunity may be allowed them to arrange the defence, and produce the necessary evidence."

This motion was strongly opposed by the Marquis of Lansdowne, Lord Calthorpe, and Lord Darnley, but was carried by 165 to 60.

Mr Brougham being called in, and informed of this decision, observed, that he would bow to it, as became him; but he now made the proposition, that he should be allowed to comment upon the case on the other side, pledging himself that he would not introduce a single word alluding

to any statement or evidence which he might hereafter bring forward. The Chancellor, however, considered comments on the evidence for the prosecution to be, in the strictest sense, part of the defendant's case; so that, though Lord Erskine strongly urged the justice of the application, the motion for granting it was negatived by 179 to 47.

Ön the following day, Mr Brougham was called upon to state the time when it would be convenient for them to open the case for the defence. That gentleman, repeating the eager anxiety of the Queen to avoid delay, observed, that some time must however be necessary for preparation. He rather exceeded her Majesty's wish in naming Monday fortnight. Some Lords observed, that this period of recess was very inconvenient, as not allowing them time to visit their estates with any comfort. It was answered and admitted, that every motive of private convenience must yield to the performance of their present duty. At the same time, considerable anxiety was shewn, that the day fixed should be one at which counsel positively would be able to proceed. Under these views, Mr Brougham finally fixed upon Tuesday the 3d of October.

The evidence against the Queen, though no obstruction had been offered to its daily publication, had not, as already observed, produced the slightest change in the views and sentiments of that great multitude by whom she was supported. The evidence, indeed, was not without its defects; and it would have been difficult at this moment to have produced any, which would not have swelled the tide that was running in one direction. The interval of three weeks, which preceded the defence, was spent in the continued assemblage of public meetings, where her

Majesty was lauded as the most illustrious of women; in the presentation of numerous addresses of the same tenor as before; and in the return of answers, echoing all the tenets of the radical chiefs. At length, however, the appointed day arrived, and the House having assembled, Mr Brougham produced himself as ready to open the case.

Mr Brougham began with expressing his fears, that he might not do full Justice to the great and perfectly good cause which he had undertaken to discuss. The apprehension which oppressed him was, that his feeble exertions might have the effect of casting, for the first time, this great cause into doubt, and turning against him the reproaches of those millions of his countrymen now jealously watching the result of these proceedings, and who might perhaps impute it to him if their lordships should reverse that judgment which they had already pronounced upon the charges in the sent state of the case. Although fully entitled to employ recrimination, and ready to do so, if necessary, for the interests of his client, that painful course did not seem at present called for. The evidence against her Majesty, he felt, did not now call upon him to utter one whisper against the conduct of her illustrious consort, and he solemnly assured their lordships, that but for that conviction his lips would not at that time be closed. In this discretionary exercise of his duty, in postponing the case which he possessed, their lordships must know that he was waving a right which belonged to him, and abstaining from the use of materials which were unquestionably his own. He felt, however, that, were he now to enter on the branch of his case to which he had alluded, he should seem to quit the higher ground of innocence on which he was proud to stand. He admitted, that her

Majesty had left this country; she had moved in a foreign society, and one in some respects inferior to that to which her rank entitled her. This, however, was the fault of their lordships themselves, who, however at one time they had courted her society, had deserted her as soon as the sun of royal favour was withdrawn. Mr Brougham then pointed out the cruel treatment his illustrious client had on so many occasions experienced. She had never heard, first, of the marriage, and then of the death of her daughter, unless by mere accident. How wretched was the lot of this lady, as displayed in all the events of her chequered life! It was always her sad fate to lose her best stay, her strongest and surest protector, when danger threatened her; and, by a coincidence most miraculous in her eventful history, not one of her intrepid defenders was ever withdrawn from her, without that loss being the immediate signal for the renewal of momentous attacks upon her honour and her life. Mr Pitt, who had been her constant friend and protector, died in 1806. A few weeks after that event took place, the first attack was levelled at her. Mr Pitt left her as a legacy to Mr Perceval, who became her best, her most undaunted and firmest protector. But no sooner had the hand of an assassin laid prostrate that Minister, than her Royal Highness felt the force of the blow, by the commencement of a renewed attack, though she had but just been borne through the last by Mr Perceval's skilful and powerful defence of her character. Mr Whitbread then undertook her protection, but soon that melancholy catastrophe happened which all good men of every political party in the state, he believed, sincerely and universally lamented; then came with Mr Whitbread's dreadful loss the murmuring of that storm which was so soon to burst with all

its tempestuous fury upon her hapless and devoted head. Her daughter still lived, and was her friend; her enemies were afraid to strike, for they, in the wisdom of the world, worshipped the rising Sun. But when she lost that amiable and beloved daughter, she had no protector; her enemies had nothing to dread; innocent or guilty, there was no hope, and she yielded to the entreaty of those who advised her residence out of this country. Who, indeed, could love persecution so stedfastly, as to stay and brave its renewal and continuance, and harass the feelings of the only one she loved dearly, by combating such repeated attacks, which were still reiterated after the record of the fullest acquittal? It was, however, reserved for the Milan commission to concentrate and condense all the threatening clouds which were prepared to burst upon her ill-fated head; and, as if it were utterly impossible that the Queen could lose a single protector without the loss being instantaneously followed by the commencement of some important step against her, the same day which saw the remains of her venerable Sovereign entombed-of that beloved Sovereign who was from the outset her constant father and friend -that same sun which shone upon the Monarch's tomb, ushered into the palace of his illustrious son and successor one of the perjured witnesses who was brought over to depose against her Majesty's life.

Mr Brougham then proceeded to comment on the different parts of the evidence. He pointed out many parts which had been stated by the Attorney-General in opening the case, but which he had been unable to substantiate. He fully believed that his learned friend believed the truth of what he had asserted. He knew full well that there was no other way for these statements to have got into his learn

ed friend's brief but out of the mouths of the witnesses, who at first had not hesitated to garnish their stories, though they were not found afterwards hardy enough to adhere to their falsehoods when brought to their lordships' bar. When they came to the point, they were scared from their first statements. Mr Brougham observed, that the witnesses were all foreigners, and almost all from Italy, a country which had never been famous for the soundness of its testimony. There was only one nymph for the whole Helvetic Confederation-only one from Germany, a common chamber-maid at an inn; although her Majesty had lived much in both of these countries. The two principal witnesses were proved to have made averments directly contrary to those which they lately swore to; so that, at all events, their reputation for truth could not stand very high. Demont had been praised for her candour; but as this candour had merely consisted in frankly confessing herself a liar, it could not tend very much to raise her credit. Could it be supposed that she would have been so anxious to introduce her two younger sisters into the Queen's household, had she known it to be such as she represented it? Many of the facts were in themselves utterly incredible, both from shewing a degree of grossness which could not be supposed in a person of the Queen's rank and habits, and from the total absence of the most common precautions.

Such, Mr Brougham concluded, was the case before their lordships. He begged again to call their attention, at the risk of fatiguing by repetition, to the two grand points of defence which he hoped their lordships would never dismiss from their minds-first, that the case was not confirmed by witnesses, for neglecting to call whom there was no pretence whatever the

second point was, that every one witness that had been called was injured in credit. How but by these two tests could plots be discovered? Plots were often discovered by the second, when the first failed. When persons in respectable stations in life, previously of unimpeached characters, were got to give evidence in support of fraud and falsehood, the innocent must despair; escape became impossible, unless the plot appeared through the evidence-unless the testimony of the witnesses broke down under them— unless some points, entirely neglected, or incautiously secured, exposed the whole fabrication to ruin and destruction. Their lordships would recollect an illustration of this, which was to be found in a great passage in the sacred volume. He called it a great passage, because it was full of instruction, because it was just, because it was eloquent. The two judges were prepared with evidence fitted to their object, and well arranged. They hardened their hearts, that the look of their innocent victim towards heaven could not divert them from doing the purposes of unjust judgment, or from giving a clear consistent story. But their falsehood was detected, and their victim was saved, by the little circumstance of a mastick-tree. This was a case applicable to all conspiracies and plots. This little circumstance was of the unessential, but decisive kind, which the providence of Heaven made use of to detect perjury. Such were Demont's letters; such Majochi's banker's clerk. Those circumstances were not important to the body of the case, but they were important to the body of credit belonging to it. "Such, my lords, (Mr Brougham continued), is the case now before you, and such is the evidence by which it is attempted to be upheld. It is evidence-inadequate to prove any proposition; impotent, to