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by Mr Brougham, who seems to have been laudably willing to co-operate in preventing the Queen's arrival in England, at the same time that, as her confidential adviser, he was anxious to negociate for her the best possible terms. The conjunct deputation did not arrive at St Omer's till Saturday the 3d, when Lord Hutchinson was immediately admitted to an audience of her Majesty. He was graciously received, and at the close of the interview, was requested to state in writing the nature of the proposals with which he was charged. Some difficulty was made, on the ground that he had only notes of conversations, and loose memoranda, containing the general ideas that had been thrown out upon the subject, but scarcely affording materials for a regular proposition. The demand, however, being again urged, with surprise at any hesitation in acceding to it, Lord Hutchinson, after a few hours, produced the following letter to Mr Brougham:

"SIR,-In obedience to the commands of the Queen, I have to inform you, that I am not in possession of any proposition or propositions, detailed in a specific form of words, which I could lay before her Majesty; but I can detail to you, for her information, the substance of many conversations held with Lord Liverpool. His Majesty's ministers propose, that 50,000l. per annum should be settled on the Queen for life, subject to such conditions as the King may impose. I have also reason to know, that the conditions likely to be imposed by his Majesty are, that the Queen is not to assume the style and title of Queen of England, or any title attached to the royal family of England. A condition is also to be attached to this grant, that she is

not to reside in any part of the united kingdom, or even to visit England. The consequence of such a visit will be an immediate message to Parliament, and an entire end to all compromise and negociation. I believe that there is no other condition-I am sure none of any importance. I think it right to send to you an extract of a letter from Lord Liverpool to me; his words are- It is material that her Majesty should know confidentially, that, if she shall be so ill advised as to come over to this country, there must then be an end to all negociation and compromise. The decision, I may say, is taken to proceed against her as soon as she sets her foot on the British shores.'— I cannot conclude this letter without my humble, though serious and sincere supplication, that her Majesty will take these propositions into her most calm consideration, and not act with any hurry or precipitation on so important a subject. I hope that my advice will not be misinterpreted. I can have no possible interest which would induce me to give fallacious counsel to the Queen. But, let the event be what it may, I shall console myself with the reflection that I have performed a painful duty imposed upon me to the best of my judgment and conscience, and in a case in the decision of which the King, the Queen, the Government, and the people of England, are materially interested. Having done so, I fear neither obloquy nor misrepresentation. I certainly should not have wished to have brought matters to so precipitate a conclusion: but it is her Majesty's decision, and not mine. am conscious that I have performed my duty towards her with every possible degree of feeling and delicacy. I have been obliged to make use of your brother's hand, as I write with

pain and difficulty, and the Queen has refused to give any, even the shortest delay.

"I have the honour to be, sir, with great regard, your most obedient humble servant,

"HUTCHINSON."

It is impossible to read these propositions without feeling how little likely they were to meet the acceptance of one, who was pushing on in such a determined and intrepid career. It is certain that they could never be accepted without a full acquiescence in the criminal charges which the accompanying threat implied. The makers of the offer have been bitterly reproached with lavishing so much, or any of the public money, on one whom they believed, and expected to confess herself, thus entirely guilty and degraded. Admitting all, however, we should not regard 50,000l. a-year too much, as hush-money of a subject, which it was so important to withhold from the public eye. There is certainly something odd in the giving of so much money with such an entire denial of every thing else. If the Queen was sunk so low as to make such concessions, might not a better bargain have been made, even as to money? In fact, however, her views and feelings were wrought up to a very different pitch. The letter being read to her by Mr Brougham, was received with the strongest expressions of indignation, and authority given to reject, in an unqualified manner, the proposition. Mr Brougham, according to report, suggested the making a counter proposition, and thus opening a negociation; but the Queen, instead of complying, left the room unobserved, and asking Alderman Wood to order her carriage instantly, was seen, in a few minutes, driving on the road to Calais. Mr Brougham was only apprised

of this step by descrying her from the windows, and he and Lord Hutchinson found themselves suddenly left together to confer on their abortive attempt.

Leaving St Omer's at five in the evening of the 4th, the Queen arrived at Calais before nine, and apprehensive of any attempt to detain her, went immediately on board the English packet which lay in the harbour. Lord Hutchinson, meantime, struck with dismay at this precipitate departure, drew up the following letter, which seemed to intimate, that the conditions first named were by no means irrevocable.

"St Omer's, 5 o'clock, June 4, 1820. "MY DEAR SIR,-I should wish that you would enter into a more detailed explanation; but, to shew you my anxious and sincere wish for an accommodation, I am willing to send a courier to England to ask for further instructions, provided her Majesty will communicate to you whether any part of the proposition which I have made would be acceptable to her; and if there is anything which she may wish to offer to the English government, on her part, I am willing to make myself the medium through which it may pass. I have the honour to be, &c. "HUTCHINSON." HENRY BROUGHAM, Esq.

The Queen received this letter in the packet, but declared that there was nothing in it to change her purpose. Inspired, probably, with some presentiment of the reception which awaited her on the British shore, she shewed the utmost impatience of any thing which could delay her landing. The packet was detained for several hours in the harbour; and, after leaving it, the wind was for some time contrary; but a favourable brecze springing up, brought the vessel,

about one in the forenoon of the following day, off the harbour of Dover. The tide prevented it from entering immediately; but her Majesty, brooking no delay, went into an open boat, amid a considerable swell, and quickly set foot on the British shore.

Of all the agitations by which this great nation has been shaken, none, perhaps, so sudden, so deep, and so universal, was ever caused by any single event. Those public events, which involve ties and connexions of a domestic nature, excite interest in numerous classes, who turn with disgust from the ordinary topics of political discussion. This cause contained elements, which brought it powerfully home almost to every bosom. With the great numerical mass of the nation, one sentiment only prevailed. The whole, to the class of second-rate shopkeepers upwards inclusive, embraced the cause of the Queen with the most enthusiastic zeal. All the generous, and all the turbulent feelings of the British people, conspired to turn their feelings in this direction. On one side, sympathy with an illustrious female, supposed injured, unprotected, returning to her rightful kingdom amid the most formidable dangers which stood there arrayed against her; and whom public enthusiasm not only acquitted of all guilt, but invested with every quality which romance bestows on its heroines. On the other hand, was the opportunity afforded of attacking, with impunity, in the most sensible point and effect, the highest constituted authorities, and even of personally insulting the most illustrious individual in the nation. On both sides scope was afforded for the propensities which have always been strongest among this great people; and we cannot, therefore, wonder at the universal ferment excited. All the sufferings of the nation itself,

though represented before as quite intolerable, seemed now unfelt. The courtiers of popular favour laid down their standing topics of radical reform, universal suffrage, and the downfall of the borough-mongers; and directed all their efforts to proclaim and redress the wrongs of an injured Queen. Amid the boundless tide of popular enthusiasm, the higher ranks remained fixed in a sort of timid and hesitating gaze. In the course of travelling and communication, they had been strongly acted upon by the unfavourable reports current on the continent; and all ladies, in particular, could not avoid seeing in the overt acts of their newly-arrived Sovereign, much from which their instinctive feelings of decorum revolted. This class, however, if they did not share in the general spirit, merely stood aloof, and gave no interruption to it; so that the Queen, on landing, appeared to be hailed with one unanimous and enthusiastic greeting from the whole kingdom united.

The Queen received at Dover the first earnest of the flattering reception which awaited her. As rumour had already announced her coming, the shores and surrounding heights were lined with spectators, whose feelings were announced by loud and applauding acclamations. The crowd was such as to make it impossible for her Majesty to proceed on foot; and on getting into a carriage, the horses were taken out, and it was drawn to the inn by the populace. The commandant, after some hesitation, fired a royal salute, and stationed a guard of honour at the door of the hotel. Although her Majesty departed for Canterbury before six o'clock, she had already been waited upon, and an address presented, by a deputation of the principal inhabitants. The road to Canterbury was filled with numerous spectators; and on reaching that

ancient city, the light of a hundred torches shewed nearly the whole in habitants assembled to hail her entrance; while, at the hotel, the mayor and corporation were ready to present an address of congratulation.

On the morning of the 6th, the Queen set out for London, with the announced intention of entering the capital on that day. All on the road thither was in motion. The population of the country, for many miles round, was drawn up on each side; while Chatham, Rochester, Dartford, and the other towns through which she passed, were crowded with applauding multitudes. It was in passing over Blackheath that the population of the metropolis began to be felt, and to mingle itself with that of the neighbourhood, which retained strongly the recollection of her Majesty's former residence there. The spectators now joined the procession, and receiving constantly new accessions from London, swelled by degrees to a countless multitude. As the crowd increased, and the weather became fine, the Queen caused the carriage to be thrown open, and exhibited herself to the admiring gaze of her subjects. As the cavalcade directed itself upon Westminster Bridge, the vast crowds, which were before wandering in uncertainty of its destination, soon collected in the broad avenues of Whitehall and Charingcross. The Queen, seated between Lady Hamilton and Alderman Wood, was here exhibited in full view to the assembled metropolis. A different route was said to be intended, but the vanguard taking that of Pall-mall, the rest followed, "nothing loth" perhaps; and thus passing by Carltonhouse, exhibited to the King his unwelcome spouse proceeding in this parade of popular triumph. The march closed at South Audley Street,

where Alderman Wood had quitted his house to be occupied by her Majesty. Even after her entrance, the crowd continuing to fill the street in a vast unbroken body, she was graciously pleased to come forth and receive their homage, which was expressed by loud and multiplied plaudits.

Amid this boundless tide of popular enthusiasm, ministers, in the interior of the cabinet, were earnestly deliberating on the painful course which they had now to take. They had determined, and probably pledged themselves, if ever the Queen should set foot on English ground, to open immediately that hoard of collected proof, which, when exhibited, was expected to place her completely at their mercy. The enthusiastic part taken by the nation on the opposite side, though it shewed distinctly the abyss of odium in which they were to plunge, made no change in their fixed purpose. The two days, in which the Queen was making her triumphal journey from Dover to London, were spent by the cabinet in long and frequent conclave. The result appeared in a message transmitted to both Houses on the Tuesday, even before the Queen had reached London. It was contained in the following terms;

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A green bag, containing the papers referred to, was laid on the tables of both Houses. In the House of Lords, no observation was made; and it was merely ordered, on the motion of Lord Liverpool, that the message should be taken into consideration on the following day. In the Commons, the affair did not pass so silently. The popular, leaders inveighed in the strongest manner against the conduct of ministers.Mr Bennet could not credit that it was possible for an English minister, without the consent or approbation of Parliament, to make a proposal of the following nature to an English Queen :-"Divest yourself of your title," to which, by the bye, she had as good a right as the King had to his, "and I will give you a bribe of 50,000l. a-year," not taken from the pocket of the crown, but taken from the pocket of a distressed and impoverished people, to be given to a person, who, according to his account, was not only unworthy to sit upon the throne, but even to set foot upon the soil of England.-Sir R. Wilson did not now allude to the indignities which the Queen had received from our ministers at foreign courts, or from those foreign courts themselves, at the instigation of those ministers, nor to the paltry indignity of striking her name out of the liturgy of the church; but he did allude to the treat

ment which she had received in her journey to this country, and to the obstacles which had been raised up to retard it. It was a disgraceful fact, that the Queen of England, in crossing from the continent, should have had no other vessel on which to erect the royal standard than a common passage boat. It was a disgraceful fact, that she should have no place to which she could fly to as an asylum ; that she should have no other roof to shelter her head, than that of an individual who was an honest man.— Mr Creevey observed: The arrival of her present Majesty appeared to have created indescribable alarm amongst gentlemen on the other side of the House; for, strange as it might appear, fifteen ministers failed last night to attend in their places, being too busily employed in arming against one poor, weak, defenceless woman. And who was that woman? The daughter of the Duke of Brunswick, the niece of the late King, the wife of the present King, the mother of the Princess Charlotte.-Lord Archibald Hamilton dwelt particularly on the erasure of the Queen's name from the liturgy, by which a prejudice had been created, and she had been treated as guilty, while nothing had been yet proved against her. Particular expectation was entertained from Mr Brougham and Mr Denman, the Queen's legal advisers, who were both in the House; but they spoke as yet with extreme reserve. Mr Denman only thought that, in common justice, he was entitled to ask that the illustrious personage, whose arrival in her adopted country had been greeted with an accusation, founded not upon witnesses, but upon papers, and which was to be referred, not to the common tribunals of the country, but to a secret committee of the House, should have the earliest possible notice, and

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