S 110 THE QUEEN'S CASE 664 STATED. BY CHARLES PHILLIPS, ESQ. BARRISTER AT LAW. " You shall surely answer it, where the poorest rag upon the poorest beggar in your realm shall have the splendour of a coronation garment." Vide STATEMENT, p. 14. TWENTY-SECOND EDITION. LONDON: PRINTED FOR WILLIAM HONE, 15, LUDGATE HILL. 1820. One Shilling. \ J. M'Creery, Tooks Court, C)umcry Lane, Loudoft. J TO HIS MAJESTY THE KING. VVHEN I presume to address you on the sub- ject which afflicts and agitates the country, I do so with the most profound sentiments of respect and loyalty. But I am no flatterer. J wish well to your illustrious -house, and there- fore I address you in the tone of simple truth the interests of the King and Queen are iden- tified, and Her Majesty's advocate must be yours. The degradation of any branch of your family must in some degree compromise the dignity of all, and be assured there is as much danger as discredit, in familiarizing the public eye to such a spectacle. I have no doubt that the present exhibition is not your royal wish ; I have no doubt it is the work of wily syco- phants and slanderers, who have persuaded you of what they know to be false, in the base 6 hope that it may turn out to be profitable. With the view then of warning you against in- terested hypocrisy, and of giving to your heart its naturally humane and noble inclination, I invoke your attention to the situation of your persecuted consort ! I implore of you to con- sider whether it would not be for the safety of the state for the tranquillity of the country for the honour of your house, and, for the in- terests alike of royalty and humanity, that an helpless female should be permitted to pass in peace, the few remaining years which unmerited misery has spared to her. It is now, Sire, about five-and-twenty years since Her Majesty landed on the shores of England a princess by birth- a Queen by marriage the relative of kings, and the daugh- ter and the sister of an hero. She was then young direct from the indulgence of a paternal court the blessing of her aged parents, of whom she was the hope and stay ; and happi- ness shone brightly o'er her : her life had been all sunshine time for her had only trod on flowers ; and if the visions which endear and decorate, and hallow home, were vanishing for ever, still did she resign them for the sacred name of wife, the sworn affection of a royal hus- band, and the allegiance of a glorious and a gallant people. She was mo more to see her noble lather's hand unhelm the warrior brow to fondle o'er his child no more for her a mother's tongue delighted as it taught : that ear which never heard a strain, that eye which never open- ed on a scene, but those of careless, crimeless, cloudless infancy, was now about to change its dulcet tones and fairy visions for the .accent and the country of the stranger. But she had heard the character of Britons she knew that chivalry and courage co-existed she knew that where the brave man and the free man dwelt, 'the very name of ivoman bore a charmed sway; and where the voice of England echoed your royal pledge, to " love and worship, and cleave to her alone," she but looked upon your Sire's example, and your nation's annals, and was satisfied. Pause and contemplate her enviable station at the hour of these unhappy nuptials ! The created world could scarcely exhibit a more interesting spectacle. There was no earthly bliss of which she was not either in the possession or the expectancy. Royal alike by birth and by alliance honoured as the choice of England's heir, reputed the most accom- plished gentleman in Europe her reputation spotless as the unfallen snow her approach heralded by a people's prayer, and her footsteps obliterated by an obsequious nobility her youth, like the lovely season which it typified, one crowded garland of rich and fragrant blos- soms, refreshing every eye with present beauty, and filling every heart with promised benefits ! No wonder that she feared no famine in that spring-tide of her happiness no wonder that her speech was rapture, and her step was buoyancy ! She was the darling of her parents' hearts a kingdom was her dower her very glance, like the sun of heaven, diffused light and warmth, and luxury around it in her public hour, fortune concentered all its rays upon her, and when she shrunk from its too radiant noon, it was within the shelter of an husband's love, which God and nature, and duty and morality, assured her unreluctant faith should be eternal. Such was she then, all joy and hope and gene- rous credulity, the credulity that springs from honour and from innocence. And who could blame it ! You had a world to chuse, and she was your selection your ages were compati- ble your births were equal you had drawn her from the home where she was honourable and happy you had a prodigal allowance showered on you by the people you had bowed your anointed head before the altar, and sworn by its majesty to cherish and protect her, and this you did in the presence of that moral na- tion, from whom you hold the crown, and in the face of that church of which you are the guardian. The ties which bound you, were of no ordinary texture you stood not in the situa- tion of some secluded profligate, whose brutal satiety might leave its victim to a death of soli- tude, where no eye could see, nor echo tell the quiverings of her agony. Your elevation was too luminous and too lofty to be overlooked, and she, who confided with a vestal's faith and a virgin's purity, in your honour and your morals, had a corroborative pledge in that pub- licity, which could not leave her to suffer or be sinned against in secret. All the calculations of her reason, all the evidence of her experience, combined their confirmation. Her own paren- tal home was purity itself, and yours might have bound republicans to royalty ; it would have been little less than treason to have doubt- ed you, and, oh, she was right to brush away the painted vermin that infest a court, who would have withered up her youthful heart with the wild errors of your ripe minority ! Oh she was right to trust the honour of " fair England's" heir, and weigh but as a breath- blown grain of dust, a thousand follies and a thousand faults balanced against the conscience of her husband. She did confide, and what has been the consequence ! History must record it, Sire, when the bright- est gem in your diadem shall have mouldered, that this young, confiding, -inexperienced crea- ture had scarcely heard the last congratulatory address upon her marriage, when she was exiled from her husband's bed, banished from her hus- B 10 band's society arid protection, and abandoned to the pollution of every slanderous sycophant who chose to crawl over the ruin! Merciful God ! was it meet to leave a human being so situated, with all her passions excited and in- flamed to the impulses of such abandonment ? Was it meet thus to subject her inexperienced youth to the scorpion stingings of exasperated pride, and all its incidental, natural temptations ? Was it right to fling the shadow of an husband's frown upon the then unsullied snow of her re- putation ? Up to the blight of that all-withering hour no human tongue dared to asperse her character. The sun of patronage was not then strong enough to quicken into life the serpent brood of slanderers: no starveling aliens, no hungry tribe of local expectants, then hoped to fatten upon the offals of the royal reputation. She was not long enough in widowhood to give the spy and the perjurer even a colour for their inventions. The peculiarities of the foreigner the weaknesses of the female the natural vivacity of youthful innocence, could not then be tortured into " demonstrations strong ;" for you, yourself, in your recorded letter, had left her purity not only unimpeached, but unsus- pected. That invaluable letter, the living do- cument of your separation, gives as the sole reason for your exile, that your " inclinations'* were not in your power ! That, Sire, and that 11 alone, was the terrific reason which you gave your consort for this public and heart-rending degradation ! Perhaps they were not ; but, give me leave to ask, are not the obligations of reli- gion equally independent of us? Has any man a right to square the solemnities of marriage according to his rude caprices ? Am I, your lowly subject, to understand that I may kneel before the throne of God, and promise conjugal fidelity till death, and self-absolve myself what- ever moment it suits my "inclination?" Not so will that mitred bench who see Her Majesty arraigned before them, read to you this cere- mony. They will tell you it is the most solemn ordinance of man consecrated by the approv- ing presence of our Saviour acknowledged by the whole civilized community the source of life's purest pleasures, and of death's happiest consolations the great moral chain by which society is held together the sacred cement of all social intercourse the rich fountain of our life and being, whose draught not only purifies existence, but causes man to live in his pos- terity they will tell you that it cannot perish by " inclination" but by crime, and that if there is any difference between the prince and the peasant who invoke its obligation, it is in the more enlarged duty entailed upon him, to whom the Almighty has vouchsafed the influ- ence of an example. 12 Thus, then within one year after her mar- riage, was she flung " like a loathsome weed" upon the world, no cause assigned except your loathing inclination ! It mattered nothing, that, for you she had surrendered all her worldly prospects that she had left her home, her parents, and her country that she had con- fided in the honor of a prince, and the heart of a man, and the faith of a Christian ; she had, it seems, in one little year " outlived your liking," and the poor, abandoned, branded, heart-rent outcast must bear it all in silence, for she was a defenceless ivoman and a stranger. Let any man of ordinary feeling think on her situation at this trying crisis, and say he does not feel his heart's blood boil within him ! Poor unfor- tunate ! who could have envied her her salaried shame and royal humiliation ! The lowliest peasant in her reversionary realm was happy in the comparison. The parents that loved her, were far, far away the friends of her youth were in another land she was alone and among strangers, and he who should have rushed between her and the bolt of heaven, left her exposed to a rude world's caprices. And yet she lived and lived without a murmur : her tears were silent her sighs were lonely; and when you perhaps in the rich blaze of earth's magnificence forgot that such a wretch existed, no reproach of hers awoke your slum- 13 bering memory. Perhaps she cherished the visionary hope, that the babe whose " perilous infancy" she cradled, might one day be her hapless mother's advocate ! How fondly did she trace each faint resemblance! each little casual maternal smile, which played upon the features of that child, and might some distant day be her redemption ! How, as it lisped the sacred name of father, did she hope its innocent infant tone might yet awake within that father's breast, some fond association ! Oh, sacred fancies! oh sweet and solemn visions of a mother who but must hallow thee ! Blest be the day-dream that beguiles her heart, and robes each cloud that hovers o'er her child in airy colours of that heart's creation ! Too soon life's wintry whirlwind must come to sweep the prismed vapour into nothing. Thus, Sire, for many and many a heavy year did your deserted Queen beguile her solitude. Meanwhile for you a flattering world assumed its harlot smiles the ready lie denied your errors the villain courtier defied each act, which in an humble man was merely duty, and mid the din of pomp and mirth and revelry, if remorse spoke, 'twas inarticulate. Believe me, Sire, when all the tongues that flattered you are mute, and all the gaudy pageants that deceived you are not even a shadow, an awful voice will ask in thunder, did your poor wife 11 deserve this treatment merely from some dis- taste of " inclination." It must be answered, did not the altar's vow demand a strict fidelity, and was it not a solemn and a sworn duty " for better and for worse," to watch and tend her correct her waywardness by gentle chiding, and fling the fondness of an husband's love between her errors and the world ! It must be answered, where the poorest rag upon the poorest beggar in your realm shall have the splendour of a coronation garment. Sad, alas, were these sorrows of her solitude, but sad as they were, they were but in their infancy. The first blow passed a second and severer followed. The darling child, over whose couch she shed her silent tear upon whose head she poured her daily benediction in whose infant smile she lived and moved and had her being, was torn away, and in the mo- ther's sweet endearments she could no longer lose the miseries of the wife. Her father, and her laurelled brother too, upon the field of battle, sealed a life of glory, happy in a sol- dier's death, far happier that this dreadful day was spared them! Her sole surviving parent followed soon, and though they left her almost alone on earth, yet how could she regret them ; she has at least the bitter consolation, that their poor child's miseries did not break their hearts. Oh miserable woman, made to rejoice over the 15 A 4 very grave of her kindred in mournful gratitude that their hearts are marble. During a long probation of exile and of woe bereft of parents, country, child, and husband, she had one solace still her character was unblemished. By a refinement upon cruelty, even that consolation was denied her. Twice had she to undergo the inquisition of a secret trial, originating in foul conspiracy, and ending in complete acquittal. The charity of her nature was made the source of crime the peculiarities inseparable from her birth were made the ground of accusation her very servants were questioned whether every thought and word, and look and gesture, and visit, were not all so many overt acts of adultery; and when her most sacred moments had been heartlessly ex- plored, the tardy verdict which freed her from the guilt, could not absolve her from the humi- liating consciousness of the accusation. Your gracious father, indeed, with a benevolence of heart more royal than his royalty, interposed his arm between innocence and punishment; for punishment it was, most deep and grievous, to meet discountenance from all your family, and see the fame, which had defied all proof, made the capricious sport of hint and insinua tion. While that father lived, she still had some protection ; even in his night of life there was a sanctity about him, which awed the daring of the highway slanderer his honest, open, genuine English look would have silenced a whole banditti of Italians. Your father acted on the principles he professed he was not more reverenced as a king, than he was beloved and respected as a man ; and no doubt he felt how poignant it must have been to be denounced as a criminal, without crime, and treated as a widow in her husband's life-time. But death was busy with her best protectors, and the venerable form is lifeless now, which would have shielded a daughter and a Brunswick. He would have warned the Milan pandars to beware the honour of his ancient house he would have told them that a prying, pettifog- ging, purchased inquisition upon the uncon- scious privacy of a royal female, was not in the spirit of the English character he would have disdained the petty larceny of any diplomatic pickpocket; and he would have told the whole rabble of Italian informers and swindling am- bassadors, that his daughter's existence should not become a perpetual proscription; that she was doubly allied to him by birth and mar- riage; and that those who exacted all a wife's obedience, should have previously procured for her an husband's countenance. God reward him ! There is not a father or an husband in the land, whose heart does not at this moment make a pilgrimage to his monument. 17 Thus having escaped from two conspiracies equally affecting her honour and her life, find- ing all conciliation hopeless, bereft by death of every natural protector, and fearing perhaps that practice might make perjury consistent, she reluctantly determined upon leaving England. One pang alone embittered her departure her darling, and, in despite of all discountenance, her duteous child clung round her heart with natural tenacity. Parents who love, and feel that very love compelling separation, alone can feel for her. Yet, how could she subject that devoted child to the humiliation of her mother's misery ! How reduce her to the sad alternative of selecting between separated parents ! She chose the generous, the noble sacrifice self- banished, the world was before her one grate- ful sigh for* England one tear the last, last tear upon her daughter's head and she de- parted. Oh Sire, imagine her at that departure ! How changed ! how fallen, since a few short years before, she touched the shores of England ! The day-beam fell not on an happier creature creation caught new colours from her presence joy sounded its timbrel as she passed, and the flowers of birth, of beauty, and of chivalry, bowed down before her. But now, alone, an orphan and a widow! her gallant brother in his shroud of glory ; no arm to shield, no tongue C 18 to advocate, no friend to follow an o'erclouded fortune branded, degraded, desolate, she flung herself once more upon the wave, to her less fickle than an husband's promises ! I do not wonder that she has now to pass through a severer ordeal, because impunity gives persecu- tion confidence. But I marvel indeed much, that then, after the agony of an ex-parte trial, and the triumph of a complete though lingering- exculpation, the natural spirit of English jus- tice did not stand embodied betw r een her and the shore, and bear her indignant to your capital. The people, the peerage, the prelacy, should have sprung into unanimous procession; all that was noble, or powerful, or consecrated in the land, should have borne her to the palace gate, and demanded why their Queen presented to their eye this gross anomaly ! Why her anointed brow should bow down in the dust, when a British verdict had pronounced her innocence ! Why she was refused that con- jugal restitution, which her humblest subject had a right to claim ! Why the annals of their time should be disgraced, and the morals of their nation endure the taint of this terrific pre- cedent ; and why it was that after their countless sacrifices for your royal house, they should be cursed with this pageantry of royal humiliation ! Had they so acted, the dire affliction of this day might have been spared us. We should not have seen the filthy sewers of Italy disgorge a living leprosy upon our throne; and slaves and spies, imported from a creedless brothel, land to attaint the sacred Majesty of England ! But who, alas, will succour the unfortunate? The cloud of your displeasure was upon her, and the gay, glittering, countless insect-swarm of summer friends, abide but in the sunbeam ! She passed away with sympathy I doubt not but in silence. Who could have thought, that in a foreign land, the restless fiend of persecution would have haunted her ? Who could have thought, that in those distant climes, where her distracted brain had sought oblivion, the demoniac malice of her enemies would have followed? Who could have thought, that any human form which hid an heart, would have skulked after the mourner in her wanderings, to note and con every unconscious gesture? Who could have thought, that such a man there was, who had drank at the pure fountain of our British law ! who had seen eternal justice in her sanc- tuary ! who had invoked the shades of Holt and Hardwicke, and held high converse with those mighty spirits, whom mercy hailed in hea- ven as her representatives on earth ! Yet such a man there was, who, on the classic shores of Como, even in the land of the immortal Roman, where every stone entombed 20 tin hero, and every scene was redolent of genius, forgot his name, his country, and his calling, to hoard each coinable and rabble slander! Oh sacred shades of our departed sages ! avert your eyes from this unhallowed spectacle the spotless ermine is unsullied still the ark yet stands untainted in the temple, and should unconsecrated hand assail it, there is a light- ning still, which would not slumber ! No, no the judgment seat of British law is to be soared, not crawled to it must be sought upon an eagle's pinion, and gazed at by an eagle's eye ; there is a radiant purity around it, to blast the glance of grovelling speculation. His labour was in vain, Sire. The people of England will not listen to Italian witnesses, nor ought they. Our Queen has been before this, twice assailed, and assailed on the same charges. Adultery, nay, pregnancy, was positively sworn to one of the ornaments of our navy, Captain Mariby, and one of the most glorious heroes who ever gave a nation immortality a spirit of Marathon or old Thermopylae he, who planted England's red cross on the walls of Acre, and shewed Napoleon it was invincible, were the branded traitors to their sovereign's bed ! Englishmen, and, greater scandal, English women, persons of rank, and birth, and education, were found to depose to this infernal charge! The royal mandate issued for enquiry ; Lord Erskine, 21 Lord Ellenborough, a man who had dandled accusations from his cradle, sat on the com- mission ; and what was the result? They found a verdict of perjury against her base accusers ! The very child for whose parentage she might have shed her sacred blood, was proved beyond all possible denial, to have been but the adop- tion of her charity. " We are happy to declare to your Majesty our perfect conviction, that there is no foundation whatever for believing, (I quote the very words of the Commissioners,) that the child now with the princess is the child of her Royal Highness, or that she was delivered of any child in the year 1802; nor has any thing appeared to us, which would warrant the belief that she was pregnant in that year, or at any other period within the compass of our inquiries." Yet people of rank and station, moving in the highest society in Eng- land, admitted even to the sovereign's court, actually volunteered their sworn attestation of this falsehood!! Twenty years have rolled over her since, and yet the same foul charge of adultery, sustained not as before by the plausi- ble fabrications of Englishmen, but bolstered by the habitual invention of Italians, is sought to be affixed to the evening of her life in the face of a generous and loyal people ! A kind of sacra- mental shipload a packed and assorted cargo of human affidavits has been consigned, it seems, 22 from Italy to Westminster; thirty-three thou- sand pounds of the people's money paid the pedlar who selected the articles; and with this infected freight, which should have performed quarantine before it vomited its moral pestilence amongst us, the Queen of England is sought to be attainted ! It cannot be, Sire : we have given much, very much indeed, to foreigners, but we will riot concede to them the hard-earned prin- ciples of British justice. It is not to be endured, that two acquittals should be followed by a third experiment ; that when the English Testa- ment has failed, an Italian missal's kiss shall be resorted to ; that when people of character here have been discredited, others should be recruited who have no character any where : ' but above all it is intolerable, that a defenceless woman should pass her life in endless persecution, with one trial in swift succession following another, in the hope, perhaps, that the noble heart which has defied all proof, should perish in the tor- lure of eternal accusation. Send back, then, to Italy, those alien adventurers ; the land of their birth, and the habits of their lives, alike unfit them for an English court of justice. There is no spark of freedom no grace of religion no sense of morals in their degenerate soil. Effe- minate in manners sensual from their cradles crafty, venal, and officious naturalized to crime outcasts of credulity they have seen 23 from their infancy their court a bagnio their very churches scenes of daily assignation!- their faith is form their marriage ceremony a mere mask for the most incestuous intercourse gold is the God before which they prostrate every impulse of their nature. " O sacra auri fames! quid non mortalia pectora cogis!" the once indignant exclamation of their antiquity, has become the maxim of their modern prac- tice. No nice extreme a true Italian knows ; But, bid him go to Hell to Hell he goes. A\vay with them any where from us they cannot live in England they will die in the purity of its moral atmosphere. Meanwhile, during this accursed scrutiny, even while the legal blood-hounds were on the scent, the last dear stay which bound her to the world parted, the Princess Charlotte died! I will not harrow up a father's feelings, by dwel- ling on this dreadful recollection. The poet says, that even grief finds comfort in society, and England wept with you. But, oh God ! what must have been that hapless mother's misery, when first the dismal tidings came upon her! The darling child, over whose cradle she had shed so many tears whose lightest look was treasured in her memory who mid the world's frown, still smiled upon her the fair and lovely flower, which when her orb was 21 quenched in tears, lost not its filial, its divine fidelity! it was blighted in its blossom its verdant stem was withered ! and in a foreign land she heard it, and alone no, no, not quite alone. The myrmidons of British hate were round her, and when her heart's salt tears were blinding her, a GERMAN NOBLEMAN was plun- dering her letters. Bethink you, Sire, if that fair paragon of daughters lived, would Eng- land's heart be wrung with this enquiry ? Oh ! she would have torn the diamonds from her brow, and dashed each royal mockery to the earth and rushed before the people, not in a Monarch's but in nature's majesty a child ap- pealing for her persecuted mother! and God would bless the sight, and man would hallow it, and every little infant in the land who felt a mother's warm tear upon her cheek, would turn by instinct to that sacred summons. Your daughter, in her shroud, is yet alive, Sire her spirit is amongst us it rose untombed where her poor mother landed it walks amid the people it has left the angels, to protect a parent. The theme is sacred, and I will not sully it ; I will not recapitulate the griefs, and, worse than griefs, the little, pitiful, deliberate insults which are burning on every tongue in England. Every hope blighted every friend discountenanced her kindred in their grave her declared inno- 25 cence made but the herald to more cruel accu- sation her two trials followed by a third, a third on the same charges her Royal character insinuated away by German picklocks and Ita- lian conspirators her divorce sought by an extraordinary procedure, upon grounds unte- nable before any usual lay or ecclesiastical tribunal her name meanly erased from the Liturgy her natural rights as a mother disre- garded, and her civil rights as a Queen sought to be exterminated ! and all this all, because she dared to touch the sacred soil of liberty ! because she did not banish herself, an implied adulteress ! because she would not be bribed into an abandonment of herself and of the gene- rous country over which she has been called to reign, and to which her heart is bound by the most tender ties, and the most indelible obliga- tions. Yes, she might have lived wherever she selected, in all the magnificence which boundless bribery could procure for her, offered her by those who affect such tenderness for your Royal character, and such devotion to the honour of your Royal bed. If they thought her guilty, as they allege, this daring offer was a double treason treason to your Majesty, whose honour they compromised treason to the people, whose money they thus prostituted. But she spurned the infamous temptation, and she was right. She was right to front her in- p 26 satiable accusers : even were she guilty, never was there victim with such crying palliations ; but all innocent, as in my conscience I believe her to be, not perhaps of the levities contingent on her birth, and which shall not be converted into constructive crime, but of the cruel charge of adultery, now for a third time reproduced against her. She was right, bereft of the court, which was her natural residence, and all-buoy- ant with innocence as she felt, bravely to fling herself upon the wave of the people that people will protect her Britain's red cross is her flag, and Brunswick's spirit is her pilot. May the Almighty send the Royal vessel triumphant into harbour! Sire, I am almost done ; T have touched but slightly on your Queen's misfortunes I have contracted the volume of her miseries to a page, and if upon that page one word offend you, im- pute it to my zeal, not my intention. Accus- tomed all my life to speak the simple truth, I offer it with fearless honesty to my Sovereign. You are in a difficult it may be in a most perilous emergency. Banish from your court the sycophants who abuse you ; surround your palace with approving multitudes, not with armed mercenaries. Other crowns may be be- stowed by despots and entrenched by cannon ; but The throne we honour is the people's choice. 27 Its safest bulwark is the popular heart, and its brightest ornament, domestic virtue. Forget not also, there is a throne which is above even the throne of England where flatterers cannot come where kings are sceptreless. The vows you made are written in language brighter than the sun, and in the course of nature, you must soon confront them ; prepare the way by effacing now, each seeming, slight, and fancied injury ; and when you answer the last awful trumpet, be your answer this : " GOD, I FORGAVE, I HOPE TO BE FORGIVEN." But, if, against all policy, and all humanity, and all religion, you should hearken to the counsels which further countenance this un- manly persecution, then must I appeal, not to you, but to your parliament. I appeal to the sacred prelacy of England, whether the holy vows which their high church administered, have been kept towards this illustrious lady whether the hand of man should have erased her from that page with which it is worse than blasphemy in man to interfere whether as heaven's vicegerents, they will not abjure the sordid passions of the earth, imitate the inspired humanity of their Saviour, and, like him, pro- tect a persecuted creature from the insatiate fangs of ruthless, bloody, and untiring accu- sation ! I appeal to the hereditary peerage of the realm 28 whether they will aid this levelling denuncia- tion of their Queen whether they will exhibit the unseemly spectacle of illustrious rank and royal lineage degraded for the crime of claim- ing its inheritance whether they will hold a sort of civil crimination, where the accused is entitled to the mercy of an impeachment; or whether they will say with their immortal an- cestors, " We will not tamper with the laws of England?" 1 appeal to the ermined, independent Judges, whether life is to be made a perpetual indict- ment whether two acquittals should not dis- countenance a third experiment whether, if any subject-suitor came to their tribunal thus circumstanced, claiming either divorce or com- pensation, they could grant his suit ; and I in- voke from them, by the eternal majesty of Bri- tish justice, the same measure for the peasant and the prince ! I appeal to the Commons in parliament assem- bled, representing the fathers and the husbands of the nation I beseech them by the outraged morals of the land ! by the overshadowed dig- nity of the throne ! by the holiest and tenderest forms of religion ! by the honour of the army, the sanctity of the church, the safety of the state, and the character of the country! by the solemn virtues which consecrate their hearths ! by those fond endearments of nature 29 and of habit which attach them to their che- rished wives and families, T implore their tears, their protection, and their pity upon the mar- ried widow and the childless mother ! To those high powers and authorities I ap- peal with the firmest confidence in their honour, their humanity, Iheir integrity, and their wis- dom. May their conduct justify my faith, and raise no blush on the cheek of our posterity ! I have the honour to subscribe myself, Sire, Your Majesty's most faithful subject, CHARLES PHILLIPS. Sligo, Ireland, August the 1st, 1820. APPENDIX. Windsor Castle, April the 30th, 1796. " MADAM, " As Lord Cholmondeley informs me that you wish I would define, in writing,* the terms upon which we are to live, I shall endeavour to explain myself upon that head, with as much clearness, and with as much propriety, as the nature of the subject will admit. Our inclinations are not in our power, nor should either of us be held answerable to the other, because nature has not made us suitable to each other. Tranquil and comfortable society is however in our power ; let our intercourse therefore be restricted to that, and I will distinctly subscribe to the condition *J- which you required, through Lady Cholmondeley, that even in the event * The substance of this letter had been previously conveyed in a mes- sage through Lord Cholmondeley to her Royal Highness, But it war thought by her Royal Highness, to be infinitely too important to rest merely upon a verbal communication, and therefore she desired that his Royal Higbness's pleasure upon it should be communicated to her in writing. t Upon the receipt of the message alluded to in the foregoing note, her Royal Highness, though she had nothing to do but to submit to the arrangement which his Royal Highness might determine upon, desired it might be understood, that she should insist that any such arrangement, if once made, should be considered as final. And that his Royal High- ness should not retain the right, from time to time, at his pleasure, or under any circumstances, to alter it. UU SOU 1 HtHN MtUBJWM. LIDnn 000 092 707 9 31 of any accident happening to my daughter, which 1 trust Providence in its mercy will avert, I shall not infringe the terms of the restriction by proposing at any period, a con- nection of a more particular nature. I shall now finally close this disagreeable correspondence, trusting that, as we have completely explained ourselves to each other, the rest f our lives will be passed in uninterrupted tranquillity. I am, Madam, With great truth, Very sincerely yours, (Signed) GEORGE P." ANSWER. Translat ion. " The avowal of your conversation with Lord Cholmon- deley, neither surprises, nor offends me. It merely con- firmed what you have tacitly insinuated for this twelve month. But after this, it would be a want of delicacy, or rather an un worth}' meanness in me, were I to complain of those conditions which you impose upon yourself. " 1 should have returned no answer to your letter, if it had not been conceived in terms to make it doubtful whether this arrangement proceeds from you or from me, and you are aware that the credit of it belongs to you alone. "The letter which you announce to me as the last, obliges me to communicate to the King, as to my Sovereign and my fa- ther, both your avowal and my answer. You will find enclosed the copy of my letter to the King. I apprise you of it, that I may not incur the slightest reproach of duplicity from you. As I have at this moment no protector but His Majesty, I refer myself solely to him upon this subject, and if my conduct meets his approbation, I shall be in some degree at least consoled. I retain every sentiment of 32 gratitude for the situation in which I find myself, as Princess of Wales, enabled by your means to indulge in the free exercise of a virtue dear to my heart, I mean charity. " Jt will be my duty likewise to act upon another motive, that of giving an example of patience and resignation under every trial. " Do me the justice-to believe, that I shall never cease to pray for your happiness, and to be Your much devoted CAROLINES 6th of May, 1796. J. M'Creerr, Tooks-Couit. CIninceryLane, London;