Caroline R.
To the King's Most Excellent Majesty.
The Protest and Remonstrance of Caroline, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland.
Your Majesty having been pleased to refer to your privy council the Queen's memorial, claiming as of right to celebrate the ceremony of her coronation on the 19th day of July, being the day appointed for the celebration of your Majesty's royal coronation; and Lord Viscount Sidmouth, one of your Majesty's principal secretaries of state, having communicated to the Queen the judgment pronounced against her Majesty's claim; in order to preserve her just rights, and those of her successors, and to prevent the said minute being in after-times referred to as deriving validity from her Majesty's supposed acquiescence in the determination therein expressed, the Queen feels it to be her bounden duty to enter her most deliberate and solemn protest against the said determination; and to affirm and maintain, that by the laws, usages, and customs of this realm, from time immemorial, the queen-consort ought of right to be crowned at the same time with the king's majesty.
In support of this claim of right, her Majesty's law officers have proved before the said council, from the most ancient and authentic records, that queens-consort of this realm have, from time immemorial, participated in the ceremony of the coronation with their royal husbands. The few exceptions that occur demonstrate, from the peculiar circumstances in which they originated, that the right itself was never questioned, though the exercise of it was from necessity suspended, or from motives of policy declined.
Her Majesty has been taught to believe that the most valuable laws of this country depend upon, and derive their authority from, custom; that your Majesty's royal prerogatives stand upon the same basis: the authority of ancient usage cannot therefore be rejected without shaking that foundation upon which the most important rights and institutions of the country depend. Your Majesty's council, however, without controverting any of the facts or reasons upon which the claim made on the part of her Majesty has been supported, have expressed a judgment in opposition to the existence of such right. But the Queen can place no confidence in that judgment, when she recollects that the principal individuals by whom it has been pronounced were formerly her successful defenders; that their opinions have waved with their interest, and that they have since become the most active and powerful of her persecutors: still less can she confide in it, when her Majesty calls to mind that the leading members of that council, when in the service of your Majesty's royal father, reported in the most solemn form, that documents reflecting upon her Majesty were satisfactorily disproved as to the most important parts, and that the remainder was undeserving of credit. Under this declared conviction, they strongly recommended to your Majesty's royal father to bestow his favour upon the Queen, then Princess of Wales, though in opposition to your Majesty's declared wishes. But when your Majesty had assumed the kingly power, these same advisers, in another minute of council, recanted their former judgment, and referred to, and adopted these very same documents as a justification of one of your Majesty's harshest measures towards the Queen—the separation of her Majesty from her affectionate and only child.
The Queen, like your Majesty, descended from a long race of kings, was the daughter of a sovereign house connected by the ties of blood with the most illustrious families in Europe; and her not unequal alliance with your Majesty was formed in full confidence that the faith of the king and the people was equally pledged to secure to her all those honours and rights which had been enjoyed by her royal predecessors.
In that alliance her Majesty believed that she exchanged the protection of her family for that of a royal husband, and that of a free and noble-minded nation. From your Majesty, the Queen has experienced only the bitter disappointment of every hope she had indulged. In the attachment of the people she has found that powerful and decided protection which has ever been her steady support and her unfailing consolation. Submission, from a subject, to injuries of a private nature, may be matter of expedience—from a wife it may be matter of necessity—but it never can be the duty of a queen to acquiesce in the infringement of those rights which belong to her constitutional character.
The Queen does therefore repeat her must solemn and deliberate protest against the decision of the said council, considering it only as the sequel of that course of persecution under which her Majesty has so long and so severely suffered; and which decision, if it is to furnish a precedent for future times, can have no other effect than to fortify oppression with the forms of law, and to give to injustice the sanction of authority. The protection of the subject from the highest to the lowest, is not only the true but the only legitimate object of all power; and no act of power can be legitimate which is not founded on those principles of eternal justice, without which law is but the mask of tyranny, and power the instrument of despotism.
Queen's House, July 17.