SIR,

LETTER II.

то THE

SAME.

June 25, 1820.

WITH grief, with astonishment, and with horror, did I last night learn that the Queen had rejected the mild, respectful, yet earnest admonition, of nearly 400 members of the British Senate !

I had imagined, sir, that I should not again have had to open my lips on this painful subject. But once I have discussed it, or rather a branch of it. Then I merely retorted on the factious their accusation, that "the enemies of the Queen prejudged the question at issue;" pointing out in that very accusation the proof of their own prematurity of decision. Then I appealed to the common sense of the people of England, whether it could for a moment conceive a largely constituent portion of the British Nation base enough, or blind enough, to suffer a woman, and that woman the first in the kingdom, and the mother of the world's adoration, to go to trial on a baseless fabric of

complotted, perjured, profligate accusation. The sending down of the green bag is equivalent to the finding of a true bill by a grand jury. The finding of a grand jury merely puts a person on their trial, where they are allowed that defence which in many instances explains and establishes their innocence.

Let it be remembered, that the green bag could not go into Parliament without the sanction of the Cabinet Council, and that on its contents, and the legal necessity of submitting them to the cognizance of Parliament, the first law authorities in the land have been consulted. By the delicate and considerate proceeding of appointing a Secret Committee, the Queen, should she be finally sent to trial, will in fact have had the equivalent benefit of two grand jury bills; the first, found by the entire Cabinet Council of England, and its legal advisers: the second, by a Secret Committee of the House of Lords.

They who would serve the purposes of fac tion, by exasperating the worst passions of brute ignorance, advise bringing the conduct of the Queen before Committees of the whole

Houses, that, through the filthy channel of demagogue dishonesty, they might steal many marches of popular excitement, before, in the nature of the case, any vindicatory plea could be put in to neutralize its mischievous effects. They know, too, the possibility of the bills being ignored; and in the true spirit of regicidal ferocity, dread missing the opportunity of making degraded Royalty a thorn of their own planting, and for their own purpose, in the side of allied Royalty. No! England will give the Queen the possible benefit of an Ignoramus, which may keep from the public gaze and gape charges which, even though refuted, or not enough in proof positive to be substantiated, would, in their nauseating explicitness, operate with many, very many, to the prejudice of her character and claims.

How ill-advised must the Queen have been to incorporate, in her first message to Parliament, the very essence of that stimulatory sophistry, which an execrable faction had already disseminated as its philippic to blundering enthusiasm and maniac disaffection. In that message, to the joy of malicious prompting, she deprecates the only course consistent

with respect to the dignity of the Crown, and which would multiply obstacles in the way of disgrace attaching to herself: there she literally re-echoes the hideous misrepresentation that a Secret Committee would be "a secret tribunal, that would dispose of her case without herself being heard, or her accusers confronted." Every man of common information must allow, that such Committees are no tribunals, but merely and essentially grand juries; and that not till these grand juries found a true bill, would any indictment go before any tribunal whatsoever: and again, that then, and surely not till then, when defence may, according to law, succeed impeachment, would ample means be afforded for cross-examining and confronting the witnesses for the prosecution, or deposing on oath against their conduct and cha

racters.

In a foregoing sentence I have endeavoured to shew the dangerous tendency of conceding the demand for Committees of the whole Houses: another feature of this demand remains to be noticed, viz. its anomalous absurdity. A Committee, for instance, of the whole House of Lords, compelled to come to some

decision, would gravely decide, that the matter should or should not return before itself for trial.

The ill-advised proceeding I have just been exposing was not considered bare-faced enough to injure the cause of the Queen. Having seduced her to treat Parliament and the people as devoid of common sense and discrimination, some fatal adviser has compelled her to astonish the country by a refusal as universally unexpected as sorely and seriously deplored.

The time is come to speak out. Apart from the question of innocence or guilt on a certain charge, the Queen's conduct, since her landing, is obnoxious to the severest animadversion. Did she labour under no cloud of suspicion ;-had not her conduct, years ago, been reported by the four Commissioners, amongst whom was my Lord Erskine, to have been marked with improprieties, and to require the authoritative reprimand of the late King had she not consented to go abroad, and officially recognized a principle of separation from her Husband;-had not prevalent report given her an ill notoriety;-had she not