When the law-officers of the crown declared, that "there existed no grounds upon which legal proceedings could be instituted," two obvious and distinct paths were open to ministers. They had their election to advise, either that her majesty should return to this country with all the honours and constitutional privileges belonging to her high station, or else that she should be prevailed upon to establish her court abroad. Yet ministers determined to deviate into a dark and crooked path. They did not venture openly to advise that the queen should return; and yet, as if determined that she should come to this country, they took care to render it impossible for her to remain abroad! Was not the name of the noble-minded Caroline insultingly excluded from the Liturgy? And what reason was assigned for so unjustifiable a proceeding? The Archbishop of Canterbury and other church pluralists gave this: "If any defiled name should there be inserted, the principles of morality would be invaded, the foundations of religion would be sapped, and the destruction of our constitution must inevitably follow!" Now, even allowing the queen to have been the abandoned character

[[276]]represented by her hireling enemies,—nay, more, had she been a MURDERESS,—these impudent and canting hypocrites need not have searched far for a precedent to prove her eligibility for a place in the Liturgy! Were Henry the Eighth, Queen Mary, Charles the Second and his queen, James the Second and his queen, all pure and undefiled? But the place-hunting clergy need not have gone out of their own generation for an example of infamy. What were Queen Charlotte, George the Fourth, the Duke of York, or, though last, not least in the VIRTUES of his family, the undefiled Ernest of Cumberland? Our volumes fully explain what they were! and yet their names graced the Liturgy, as the Attorney-General has declared that the words "Royal Family" comprehend all the individuals of the royal family. But it may be objected that the names of York and Cumberland were not specifically mentioned in the days of Queen Caroline's persecutions. Well, then, the Prince of Wales' name, at least, did figure in our Prayer Book, and was he "pure and undefiled?" The pious sons of the church formally prayed that "God would endue him with his holy spirit," &c.; but it did not appear, by his actions, that their prayers produced the least effect. When he became king, he was prayed for, "to be endued with heavenly gifts, to incline to the will of God, and walk in his ways." Did his infamous conduct to his wife, and his living in open adultery with the Marchioness of Conyngham and others, qualify him for a place in the prayers of the

[[277]]church, as "pure and undefiled?" If ministers, therefore, consented to deprive the queen of this dignity, because of her imputed immorality, might it not have proved a precedent against George the Fourth himself? The lawyers, even Lord Eldon, if it had suited his purpose, might have afterwards cited the case of Caroline as a case in point, while the country could not refuse to dethrone the king on the same plea as they had dethroned the queen, more particularly as it was so easy a matter to prove the gross adultery and immorality of George the Fourth; for his derelictions from virtue were as notorious as the sun at noon-day. Would to heaven, we say, that a king might have been dethroned for immoral conduct, as the world had not then been so cursed with their atrocious deeds. When at foreign courts, her majesty justly claimed the honours pertaining to her exalted rank, but was insultingly told that she was not known as a queen! Thus subjected, untried and unheard, to every indignity which could only have followed upon proof and condemnation, her majesty had no alternative left but to return to England, and boldly face her mean-spirited and unmanly enemies. Had her title been proclaimed, had foreign courts been instructed to receive her with the honours due to a queen of England, her continuing to remain abroad would not have worn the appearance of shrinking from the defence of her reputation,—a fear to which she was utterly a stranger. Her noble soul scorned danger; for a braver heart than her's never beat in human

[[278]]breast. But her husband's ministers rendered her absence from this country incompatible with her honour; they forced her to return, and they, and they alone, were responsible for all the mischief that might have ensued to the country from such an unavoidable step on the part of the queen. No one, we think, will doubt that the most serious mischief would have occurred, if these men had persisted in their headlong career. But, like all cowards, when they found the danger hovering over their own heads, they shrunk from the contest, and took refuge in a timely retreat!

Nothing in the whole history of human suffering could equal the wrongs of her majesty. With respect to the bill of Pains and Penalties, the various records of persecution may be searched in vain for a case so foul, so false, so full of premeditated and disciplined perjury,—the inquest on Sellis was JUSTICE when compared with this, though the hand of Lord Ellenborough may be traced in both. The mock "trial" of Caroline, Queen of England, we say, cannot be matched for rancour, cruelty, for monstrous and unnatural malignity. There never was a case at all like it: it is without an example in history, and can never become a precedent; for future generations will read it with pity and with horror. The foul charges preferred against the queen by the lowest of the low were disproved by noblemen of the first consideration, by ladies of the highest rank and of the most unblemished honour, by gentlemen of family, of education, and integrity, and by distinguished

[[279]]and gallant soldiers. The evidence of such respectable characters as these present a picture of her majesty which future generations will admire and venerate. But it is impossible that impartial and discerning Englishmen should believe that the "Bill of Pains and Penalties," nominally aimed against the queen, had not, for its main objects, the doing away with trial by jury and the liberty of the press, and, on their ruins, to establish a system of absolute despotism. Whether these effects were originally foreseen and intended by the sagacious projectors of that wicked measure, is a matter of little importance; it is quite obvious that such would have been its consequences. The place-loving Lord Eldon, however, tried hard to make people believe that bills of Pains and Penalties were then "part and parcel" of the constitution of the kingdom. But a trial of such an indescribably infamous description was never before attempted; and even if it had been, Lord Eldon, as a good chancellor, ought to have declared against it, instead of attempting to defend and perpetuate it. With overbearing oligarchs, any sort of precedent was deemed sufficient; and it is rather wonderful that they did not, by the help of precedent, endeavour to re-establish the Star Chamber! If they had succeeded in such a point, the first of the kind attempted in modern times, the faction would, doubtless, have considered themselves authorised, whenever it had suited their views, to proceed by a bill of Pains and Penalties against any obnoxious individual, instead of going before a common

[[280]]jury! To establish such a monstrous system, we repeat, was one of the real, though disguised, objects of ministers, in the prosecution of Queen Caroline; for they perceived the progress of political knowledge, and felt alarmed lest they should lose their arbitrary authority, if they could not adopt some such tyrannical measure to frighten the people into obedience. It was the glorious majesty of the press that bravely defeated such infamous machinations against liberty, for which future generations will have cause to venerate and worship it.

The queen, however, was most grievously slandered and ill-treated by the Tory portion of public writers. Nothing, indeed, could have been more villanous than the charges which blackened the columns of certain newspapers,—journals that, in their general colouring, were too foul and too dark to obtain belief. Well remunerated by government, the scurrilous editors of such libels against female majesty appeared to exult in the pain they inflicted; so long as they satisfied the hateful revenge of their abandoned employers, their end was answered. However much such prostitution of talent is to be lamented, there was yet a worse crime committed by the enemies of Queen Caroline. The ministers of the "established" church scrupled not to take part against her, and, instead of confining themselves to the exposition of the mild and forbearing doctrines of the Christian religion, not unfrequently indulged their wicked disloyalty by delivering the most foul and blasphemous denunciations against

[[281]]their queen, even from the pulpit! This, of course, could only be done with a view of pleasing those who had "rich livings" to reward their misplaced zeal. One of these contemptible reverends, by the name of Blacow, was so violent against her majesty, that the queen's law-advisers thought it right to punish his impertinence by an action, in the Court of King's Bench, for a malicious libel, which was contained in a sermon preached by him in St. Mark's Church, Liverpool, and which was afterwards published in the shape of a pamphlet. The jury having found the reverend defendant guilty, the following sentence was passed upon him by the presiding judge:

"The defendant," Mr. Justice Bailey said, "had been convicted of a libel, contained in a sermon preached by him. He was a clergyman, and had uttered the libel within the church. It was, he rejoiced to say, a rare instance of so sacred a place being corrupted to such purposes(?). Of all other places, the house of God, where charity and brotherly love alone should be inculcated, was the last which should be made a theatre for attacks upon the characters of living persons. Every man had enough to do to look to his own character, and it was not necessary to go abroad and make ourselves inquisitors into those of others. This libel was uttered at a time, and upon a subject, upon which there was no great unanimity of thinking, and was therefore, in its nature, calculated to excite far other feelings than such as ought to be indulged in within an