He complained bitterly of the conduct of the leaders of Opposition. Their language to the Queen, especially that of Lord Grey, Mr. Tierney, and Sir Francis Burdett, was, "Oh! you may be sure you never can be prosecuted,"—thereby, as he acknowledges, "taking away what must doubtless have most powerfully enforced her consent. Then no sooner had she refused, and the prosecution goes forward, than they say, Government never should have admitted a compromise at all, but have prosecuted without hesitation."[29] ]
"She seems," writes Lord Dudley, "to have been advised by persons that are resolved to play the deepest possible game, and care little to what risk they expose her, provided they have a chance of turning out the Government, or perhaps of over-throwing the monarchy. I do not think that it is Brougham's doing."[30] ] "The people," confesses Cobbett, "as far as related to the question of guilt or innocence, did not care a straw."[31] ] Their leaders cared still less:
"Careless of fate, they took their way,
Scarce caring who might win the day;
Their booty was secure."
"If her innocence were proved," observes a popular historian, "they would gain a triumph over the King, force upon him a wife whom he could not endure, overturn his Ministers, and perhaps shake the monarchy; if her guilt, they would gain the best possible ground for declaiming on the corruption which prevailed in high places, and the monstrous nature of those institutions which gave persons of such character the lead in society."[32] ]
The excitement increased as the arrangements for the Queen's trial became known. Lord John Russell published a letter addressed to Mr. Wilberforce, on the subject, urging him again to attempt an arrangement; but he had had enough of interfering in such a business, and declined to take the post assigned him, though the writer expressed his opinion that in his hands was perhaps the fate of the country. He was as anxious as ever to do good, but did not see how it could be done. His opinion of the Queen did not improve, in consequence of the "spirit" she continued to display, which he now felt inclined to describe in more appropriate language:—"I feel deeply the evil," he writes in his Diary, "that so bad a woman as I fear she is, should carry the victory by sheer impudence (if she is guilty), and assume the part of a person deeply injured."[33] ]
Other well-meaning persons were equally anxious for an interposition; indeed, the King was obliged to send a message to one who desired an audience, with this object in view, "that he never talked on political subjects with any but his Ministers."[34] ]
Another cotemporary Diarist goes to the root of the evil:—"Had some conversation with Tierney, who looked serious and down. He said everything was worse and worse out of doors, and he saw no remedy. I observed, the only remedy, the only possibility of things returning to their former state was a rebellion, and the troops standing by us, and quelling it with a high hand. He replied, that was the disease. I said, neither he nor I should live to see society where it had been and ought to be; to which he assented. I have no doubt he is sincere, yet he and his party are the real authors of the spirit we deplore."[35] ]
"Alas!" writes Wilberforce in his Diary, "surely we never were in such a scrape. The bulk of the people, I grant, are run mad; but then it was a species of insanity on which we might have reckoned, because we know their prejudices against foreigners; their being easily led away by appeals to their generous feelings; and then the doses with which they are plied, are enough to intoxicate much stronger heads than most of theirs."[36] ]