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knowledge (he would not say de jure, but de facto,) of the witnesses and the charges against them, as the illustrious personage now accused would come before their Lordships? His Lordship also argued how unsuitable it was to the dignity of the House, that the Commons should examine the case with greater advantages than they enjoyed. Her Majesty would have the opportunity of cross-examining every witness-a privilege which had been described as of inestimable advantage by a noble and learned Lord, the ornament of the English bar, who had formerly exercised it so ably. What, then, would follow? That the case on which the House of Commons would have to decide, would not be the same with that on which their Lordships would decide; it would be infinitely more favourable to her Majesty. He therefore implored their Lordships, as they regarded their interests and their character, to give the accused as good an opportunity for making a satisfactorydefence before them as she would possess when she came before the House of Commons.

Lord Ellenborough and Lord Lauderdale spoke against the motion; the Marquis of Bute, Lord Belhaven, and the Earl of Carnarvon, in its favour. After a short reply from Lord Erskine, the House divided, and the motion was negatived by a majority of 78 to 28.

Disappointed in the application for a list of witnesses, the Queen, a few days after, presented, through the medium of Lord Erskine, a petition for another communication, which might in some degree compensate the want of it. The petition was as follows:

"To the Lords Spiritual, &c. "The Queen laments that the House of Lords have deemed it proper to refuse her application for a list

of the witnesses to be examined in support of the bill of degradation and dissolution of marriage; thus leaving her Majesty and her legal advisers in total ignorance as to the time or place to which the charges may relate, or the persons by whose testimony the allegations in the bill are intended to be supported.

"Her Majesty now submits to the House of Lords, that a specification of the place or places in which the criminal acts are charged to have been committed, should forthwith be furnished to her Majesty's Attorney-General; for, if this be denied, it will be impossible to be prepared to meet the accusation, or to take preliminary measures for providing defensive evidence against the charges, without bringing from every place her Majesty has visited during the last six years, every witness who had any means of observing her Majesty's conduct.

"Her Majesty further desires to be heard by her counsel and agent at your Lordships' bar, in support of this her request."

Lord Erskine, in supporting this petition, stated that he did not make any complaint now of what had been formerly refused. He had blotted out of his mind the motion formerly made, and brought this forward as an entirely new proceeding. He was convinced that without it justice could not be fully administered. The Queen could not have an opportunity of seeing the witnesses face to face, and of confronting them with others by whom they might be contradicted; there could not be a full cross-examination. At all events, a long adjournment would be necessary pending the proceedings, and what an effect would this have on the public mind! Their Lordships' dignity would not protect them against censure, if they were not most cautious and cir

cumspect during the progress of this important proceeding.

The Lord Chancellor declared that this was a motion which he could never have expected. He should have been extremely glad if the learned Lord, instead of dealing in general assertion, would have shewn in what instance, during the course of his professional life, he recollected an application of this nature to have been

made. Parliament had refused a list of witnesses; a measure in which they were borne out by the whole tenor of Parliamentary history. The common law required that in the indictment for high treason a place should be named, because that was necessary to give jurisdiction to the court; but that statement was not made in a very minute manner: the indictment set forth, that at such and such times, both before and after the day mentioned, and at such and such places, the act of treason was committed. But it was quite a novelty to require an indictment to state all the other acts, and the places where they had occurred. When his learned friend called for this specification, it appeared to him that his reasoning was pal. pably wrong, unsupported by any principle, and unsanctioned by any precedent.

Lord Holland, however unfit to contend with the learned Lord on le

gal subjects, saw many of his positions which appeared to him highly objectionable. The Bill of Pains and l'enalties on their Lordships' table was not, in its shape, frame, or circumstances, by any means so precise as an indictment; and therefore, when the learned Lord said, that no such application was made in cases of indictment, he would answer that no such application was necessary, because the indictment on the face of it stated many circumstances that were not to be found in the bill be

fore their Lordships. Did the noble Lord, or could he point out any billin that house, in the course of which the person accused had not, either de facto or de jure, a clear specification of what was alleged against him in that bill? It was not for the House to consider what would be advantageous to this or that party, but what would be conformable to the principles of substantial justice. În the case of Bishop Atterbury, it appeared to him that, besides a voluminous report made by a secret comtee, the bill contained a much more full and precise specification of the charges than was now given. If the specification were refused to her Majesty, it would be the means of putting the country to an enormous and almost indefinite expense; for, unless she knew the specific places in which the charges had been made against her, she would be obliged to place at their Lordships' bar a motley assemblage of witnesses, drawn from every quarter of the world that she had visited during the last six years. In point of consistency, convenience, and analogy, he thought it would be much better to furnish the person accused with a clear specification, such as the petition called for, than at a future time to grant a long period to enable her to prepare for her defence.

Lord Liverpool was of opinion, that the charge was as specific as the nature of the subject would allow. He agreed that the generality of it formed a reason for shewing the utmost indulgence towards the accused; but he begged to remind their Lordships, that in ordinary cases an accused party had no such advantage as was extended in this case, and which consisted of an interval between the accusation and the defence. A greater advantage than this it was difficult to conceive; and the disadvantages, therefore, (if any

there

were), under which the Queen might labour, ought to be viewed in comparison with the peculiar advantages which she enjoyed. He believed, on the whole, that the advantages and disadvantages of the plan would balance each other, and that justice would not suffer. In many divorce bills there was no specification of time or place; and though proceedings must have passed in the inferior courts, it was always competent to bring new evidence before their Lordships. Wishing to solve every doubt on the side of indulgence, he yet saw no reason to acquiesce in the new demand made upon that indulgence.

Lord King spoke for, and Earl Bathurst against, the motion. After a short reply from Lord Erskine, the question was carried in the negative by a majority of 37 to 12.

About this time, a pretty strong sensation was excited, by a motion made by Mr Wetherell, an eminent barrister, in the House of Commons, respecting a libel against the Queen, which had appeared in a provincial paper, called Flyndell's Western Luminary. In one of its numbers was found the following shameful paragraph :

"Shall a woman, who is as notoriously devoted to Bacchus as to Venus-shall such a woman as would, if found on our pavement, be committed to Bridewell and whipped-be held up in the light of suffering innocence ?"

Mr Wetherell observed, nobody would dispute, that pending any criminal or even any civil proceeding in any of the courts of common law, any publication, directly or indirectly, nearly or remotely, tending to obstruct that proceeding, was itself, by the common law of England, a criminal offence. There had been no instance, indeed, in which this ques

tion had been agitated in the course of an inquiry, on which a bill of attainder, or of pains and penalties, was to be founded; at the same time, he conceived it clear, that the paper in question contained a most flagrant breach of privilege. The learned member then went over all the previous proceedings, in order to prove, that the House must be regularly considered as about to institute an inquiry into the conduct of an individual, whom they had by repeated acts acknowledged and honoured as Queen. The question now was, whether it was not incumbent on the House, in justice to the delinquent, who was not to be tried by the forms of law, but by a bill of pains and penalties, to couple, in these anomalous cases, that species of protection to the parliamentary delinquent, which was granted by the other courts to all who were tried before them. There had been a most lamentable instance of the House deserting its duty, in the case of Lord Strafford, by allowing him to be run down out of doors. It was not till he had been convicted by clamour, out of the house, that a bill had been introduced to convict him within. It might be said, that the trash in this paper could produce no such serious effect; but still it was to be judged by its intention, and its potentiality to create mischief. If they left her Majesty similarly unprotected, what would become of the purity of that Court-the High Court of

Parliament-which, by one of their standing orders, was declared to be the standard of purity to all the other courts in the country? There was another view in which the point might be stated. Nobody could dispute that the publication of such a paragraph as the one in question was a breach of the common law of England; and then, if they did not think it right to institute a new precedent,

they could not-nay, he would say they ought not to take away from her Majesty the protection of the common law. Mr W. then quoted several instances, in which punishment had been inflicted upon offences of a much more venial nature. Mr Perceval, as Attorney-General, had filed an information against the editor of a paper, for stating the circumstances under which an excise-officer, in the discharge of his duty, had unfortunately killed a man. Mr Justice Heath would not even receive proof, that this statement had done no injury, but held, that its abstract potentiality to do injury was enough. Was an excise-officer to be protected against such attacks, while the Queen of England was left exposed to them? Lord Castlereagh observed, that nothing could be more painful to a well-regulated mind, than to observe the extreme length to which the press had gone in discussions on this subject. Instead of presenting the country to the view of foreign nations as a well-organized state, obedient and amenable to the laws, which had been its character in all former times, it had presented it to their view as an angry and disturbed community, most adverse to good order, and remote from civilization. He could assure Mr W. that no man could feel more indignation than he felt at the article in question, and indeed at the general manner in which the whole press of this country had disgraced itself on this question. There could be no doubt that the paragraph to which their attention had been called was a gross libel. This paragraph had not escaped the notice of the Attorney-General, but its appearance was very recent, and, amid the conflict of libels which daily issued from the press, it was impossible to prosecute all. He did not conceive the proceedings before the House to be

in such a state as to call for its interposition here. Nothing could be farther from his intention than to vindicate this publication; yet, before the learned gentleman had called the attention of Parliament to it, it would not have been derogatory from his character for impartiality to have considered, whether there were not other bodies in the state, and other parties in this suit, equally menaced as the illustrious lady on whose behalf he had thought it requisite to bring forward this notion. If he had read any of the ordinary prints of the day, he would have found, not only in one, but in many of them, shameful libels against those who were to be the judges, and those who were to bear evidence in this investigation. The House would allow that it would not only be fatal to the interests of justice, but also to those of morality, if witnesses were not placed under the protection and safeguard of the law. The honourable and learned gentleman would not deny this; and yet, if he could see the witnesses who had arrived in this country run down by libels, and brought into danger of their lives by tumultuous mobs excited by those libels, without complaining of those outrages as tending to pervert the course of justice, he must look at them with a very differenteye from that with which he (Lord Castlereagh) contemplated them. If the House were to vindicate their privileges against the license of the journals, they must do it with an even hand. If the hon. member had looked into the prints on the other side, he would have found many passages containing a greater infringement of the privileges of the House, than the one now in question. The last number of the Examiner contained the following paragraph :

"This is what a true Commons House would have done; but when

that House, for the main part, is composed of venal borough-mongers, grasping placemen, greedy adventurers, and aspiring title-hunters, or the representatives of such worthies,-a body, in short, containing a far greater portion of public criminals than public guardians-what can be expected from it, but just what we have seen it so readily perform ?"

The Republican, in his last number, said," We have very little hopes that the divorce bill will be rejected in such a Parliament as the present, because we know, and have seen, that they are sufficiently profligate and servile to act against the clearest testimony of innocence and right. Still this will matter nothing; the King and Parliament must wipe off the disgrace which has so long hung about themselves, before they can disgrace the Queen in the public mind. The more she suffers, the more will she be endeared to the nation. There never was in England a monarch more suspected and despised, nor a Parliament more notoriously profligate, than at present. Was it not that they hold the purse-strings of the nation, they would be kicked out of all power in a few hours, and fairly swept out of the country. At present their doom is sealed, and the herald approaching with it."

From these instances it was evident that the licentiousness of the press was at present truly deplorable, and could not be checked by any proceeding of the confined and partial nature now proposed. Some general and sweeping measure must be resorted to.

Dr Lushington, who, as one of the counsel for the Queen, was supposed to speak her sentiments, stated, that the publication in question had, when first pointed out to him, excited his strongest indignation; but on considering that it was merely an obscure

country paper, he thought it incon-
sistent with the dignity of the Queen
to take any notice of it. When he
considered that the Morning Post
and the Courier papers, which gene-
rally supported the measures of go-
vernment, and which were supposed
to be, in a certain degree, under its
influence, were suffered to go at large
with every species of libel in them
which could disgrace her Majesty, or
injure her cause, it appeared of little
consequence to him whether the
Western Luminary met the punish-
ment it deserved or not. There was
a more powerful and extensive influ-
ence, by which her Majesty's cause
had been prejudiced, and she had
been branded as guilty before trial.
She had already been treated by the
Government as if she had been con-
victed-she had been deprived by its
orders of all the honours due to her
rank and sex-she had been disgraced
in every way which their ingenuity
could invent: they had erased her
name from the Liturgy, (Hear) whilst
her trial was pending, without inform-
ing her what were the charges of
which she was accused, without tell-
ing her who were the persons who
took it upon themselves to accuse
her, without confronting her with
those who were said to be the wit-
nesses of her shame, without giving
her an opportunity of refuting their
testimony, and without permitting her
to speak in her defence. She had
been always averse to any restraints
upon the press, conceiving that they
did generally more evil than good.
He proposed, therefore, to leave her
case entirely to his Majesty's law of
ficers. Every thing must be com-
pletely altered before her Majesty
should ever, by his advice, resort for
protection to the lower courts, when
she ought to be placed under the pro-
tection of the highest.

The Attorney-General observed,

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