saw in the dusk of dewy eve what their own fancy pictured,sailors who believed that all persons could gratify their animal appetites on the public deck, where themselves had so often played the beast's part, lying waiting-women, capable of repaying the kindness and charity that had laid the foundation of their fortune, with the treachery that could rear it to the height of their sordid desires,-chambermaids, the refuse of the streets, and the common food of wayfaring licentiousness, whose foul fancy could devour every mark that beds might, but did not, present to their practised eye, lechers of either sex, who would fain have gloated over the realities of what their liquorish imagination alone bodied forth,-pimps of hideous aspect, whose prurient glance could penetrate through the keyhole of rooms where the rat shared with the bug the silence of the deserted place, these were the performers whose exploits the Commissioners chronicled, whose narratives they collected, and whose exhibition upon the great stage of the first tribunal of all the earth, they sedulously and zealously prepared by frequent rehearsal. Yet with all these helps to success-with the unlimited supply of fancy and of falsehood which the character of the people furnished-with the very body-servants of the parties hired by their wages, if not bought with a price-such an array could only be produced, as the whole world at once pronounced insufficient to prove any case, and as even the most prejudiced of assemblies in the accuser's favour turned from with disgust.

The arrival of the Queen in this country, on the accession of George IV., was the signal for proceeding against her. A green bag was immediately sent down to the two Houses of Parliament, containing the fruits of the Milanese researches; and a Bill of Pains and Penalties was prepared for her destruction. Such was the proceeding of the Court, remarkable enough, certainly in itself-sufficiently prompt-abundantly daring-and unquestionably pregnant with grave consequences. The proceeding of the country was more prompt, more decided, and more remarkable still. The people all in one voice demurred to the bill. They said, Suppose all to be true which her enemies allege we care not; she was ill-used; she was persecuted; she was turned out of her husband's house; she was denied the 'rights of a wife as well as of a mother; she was condemned to live the life of the widow and the childless, that he who should 'have been her comforter might live the life of an adulterous libertine; and she shall not be trampled down and destroyed to 'satiate his vengeance or humour his caprice.' This was the universal feeling that occupied the country. Had the whole facts as charged been proved by a cloud of unimpeachable witnesses,

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such would have been the universal verdict of that country, the real jury which was to try this great cause; and so wide of their object would the accusers have found themselves at the very moment when they would have fancied the day their own. This all men of sense and reflection saw; this the Ministers saw ; this, above all, the sagacious Chancellor very clearly saw with the sure and quick eye which served his long and perspicacious head; but this Sir John Leach never could be brought for a moment even to comprehend, acute as he was, nor could his royal friend be made to conceive it; because, though both acute men, they were utterly blinded by the passions that domineered in the royal breast, and the conceited arrogance that inspired the vulgar adviser.

But if the Ministers saw all these things, and if they moreover were well aware, as who was not ? that the whole country was excited to a pitch of rage and indignation bordering upon rebellion, and that the struggle, if persisted in against a people firmly resolved to stand between the Court and its prey, must hurry them into wide-spreading insurrection-how, it will be asked, was it possible that those Ministers-whose hatred of the Bill must have been as great as their apprehension of its consequences were grave, and who had not the shadow of an interest in its fate, except that it should instantly be abandonedcould be brought to sanction a proceeding fraught not only with every mischief to the country, but with extremest peril to themselves? The great difficulty of answering this question must be confessed; nor is it lessened by the reflection that at the head of the Government in those days there were men whose prudence was more striking than any other quality ;—men_cautious, unpretending, commonplace and loving place, like Lord Liverpool; wary, cold, circumspect, though of unflinching courage, like Lord Castlereagh; far-sighted, delighting in seeing all difficulties that existed, and many that did not, like Lord Eldon; above all, so firm-minded a man as the Duke of Wellington, a man, too, so honourable in all his feelings, and so likely to influence the councils, if he failed to turn aside the desires of the Sovereign. The defenders of the Ministers never affected to doubt the mischievous nature of the whole proceeding; they admitted all their opinions to be strongly and decidedly against it; they saw, and confessed that they saw, all the dangers to which it exposed the country; they did not deny that it was the mere personal wish of the King; and that it was the bounden duty, the undoubted interest of his Ministers, peremptorily to refuse their assistance to such a wicked and hopeless project ;-admitting, all the while, that as the Bill never could be carried through and executed, all the agitation with which so

monstrous an attempt was convulsing the country, had absolutely not a chance of success, in so far as concerned the King's object. Then, what reason did they assign for the Ministers lending themselves to such an enormity? It seems incredible, but it is true, that the only ground ever hinted at was the King's fixed determination, and the risk his Ministers ran of losing their places if they thwarted him in his favourite pursuit! Yes; as if the loss of office was like the loss of life and they had no power of refusing, because refusal was death, they crouched to that command rather than yield to which, men of integrity and of firmness, would have faced death itself. It is certain, that had the Duke of Wellington been longer in civil life, and attained his due weight in the councils of the Government, he would have taken this and no other view of the question; but it is equally certain that the Ministers at large betrayed the same submissive obedience to their master's will, showed the same dread of facing his displeasure, which unnerves the slaves of the Eastern tyrant when his voice echoes through the vaults of the seraglio, or casts them prostrate before his feet, as the scymitar's edge glances in their eye, and the bowstring twangs in their ear!

The course taken by the leading supporters of the Queen rendered the conduct of the Government still more despicable. It was early announced by Mr Brougham in the House of Commons that nothing could be more safe than for the Ministers to refuse carrying through the Bill, because if the Regent after that, should venture to dismiss them on account of their refusal, no man among their adversaries would venture to take office from which the former occupants had been driven for refusing to abandon their duty, and fly in the people's face. The Regent at once perceived the tendency of this announcement; and he met it in the only way that could be devised for counteracting that tendency. He gave his Ministers to understand, that if he turned them out for refusing to go on with the Bill, he should take their adversaries into their places without requiring them to adopt or support it. The contrivance was certainly not without ingenuity; but a little reflection must have satisfied even the most timorous place-holder that he had little to fear from so senseless a resolution, and that as long as the Whigs refused to outbid them for the royal favour in the only stock which had any value at Carlton House, support of the Bill, there was no chance whatever of their being taken into office on any other terms. surely must be something in official life as sweet as natural is supposed to be; and something peculiarly horrible to statesmen in the bare possibility of political death-else why this pleasing hope, this fond desire, this longing after longevity or why this

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dread of dissolution that makes the soul shrink back upon itself? But in one material particular the two kinds of life and death widely differ. The official's death-bed is not cheered by any hopes of immortality. The world to which he now looks forward is another, but not a better world. He knows full sure that, from the pleasing state of being to which he has been so long used and so fondly clings, he must instantly, on the great change taking place, be plunged into the dreary night of a placeless existence; be cast away with other mournful ghosts on the tempest-beaten coast of Opposition; there to wander uncertain of ever again being summoned from that inhospitable shore, or visiting the cheerful glimpses of the courtly day. Hence it is, that while men of ordinary powers are daily seen to meet death in the breach for honour or patriotism, hardly any can be found, even among the foremost men of any age, whose nerves are firm enough to look in the face the termination of official existence; and none but one bereft of his senses ever makes himself a voluntary sacrifice for his principles or his country. The Ministers of 1820 numbered not among them any one so void of political reason, as to follow Mr Canning's noble example; and all were resolved to forego the discharge of every duty, and incur, both then and ever after, the loudest reproaches, rather than put to hazard the existence of the Administration.

The people, we have said, in one voice demurred to the Bill, and plainly indicated, that if every tittle of the charges against the Queen were proved, or were admitted to be true, they would not suffer her to be sacrificed to the rage of one who had no right whatever to complain of her conduct were it ever so bad. But this feeling did not prevent them from also being prepared, in justice towards her character, to take issue upon the fact; and accordingly the trial before the Lords was looked to with the most universal and painful anxiety, though with a confidence which nothing could shake. After a strenuous but unavailing attempt to arrest the progress of the measure, and fling out the Bill on the first reading, her Majesty's Counsel, Mr Brougham, her Attorney, and Mr Denman, her Solicitor-General, prepared to resist it upon the merits of the case, to meet the evidence of the Milan Commissioners, and to defend their august client from every accusation.* An adjournment of some weeks was allowed the promoters of the measure to prepare their case; the Parliament, instead of the usual prorogation, remained sitting,

* Her other counsel were Mr Justice Williams, Mr Serjeant Wilde, and Dr Lushington.

though the Commons adjourned from time to time; and the Seventeenth of August was fixed for the opening of this extraordinary cause. All that public expectation and anxiety excited to the highest pitch could lend of interest to any trial, was here combined, with the unexampled attendance daily of almost all the Peers of the Empire, the assistance of all the Judges of the land, the constant presence of the Commons, a vast concourse of spectators. The Queen several times proceeded to the House in state, accompanied by her suite; and occupied a seat near her Counsel, but within the bar. The Nobles best known to the surrounding multitude, were greeted on their way to and from Westminster with expressions of popular feeling, friendly or hostile, according as they were known to take part with or against Her Majesty; but on the whole, extraordinary tranquillity prevailed. This was very much owing to the undoubting confidence of a favourable result, which kept possession of the people from the very first; for when the deposition of the chief witness against the Queen had proved very detrimental to her case, and her adversaries were exulting before his cross-examination had destroyed his credit, very alarming indications of irritation and rage were perceived, extending from the people to the troops then forming the garrison of the capital. Nor were there wanting those who judged it fortunate for the peace of the empire and the stability of the throne, that so popular a prince and so very deter mined a man as the Duke of Kent, was not then living to place himself at the head of the Queen's party, espoused as that was by the military no less than by the civil portion of the community.

After great and memorable displays of eloquence and professional skill on all sides, it was found that the case had failed entirely; and the Bill, which for so many months had agitated the whole country, was at length, on the Seventh of November, withdrawn. It is said that the advisers of the Queen were dissatisfied with the conduct of that party to which they, generally speaking, belonged, the Whigs-because these might have much more shortly made an end of the case. There were several periods in the proceeding, which offered the firmest ground for that great and powerful body to act with decisive effect; espousing as it did the right side of the question, but espousing it feebly, and not very consistently. If at any of those points they had made a strenuous resistance, and refused to proceed further, though they might have been defeated by a small majority, the conductors of the Queen's case would have at once withdrawn from a proceeding which presented daily to the indignant world the spectacle most abhorrent to every right feeling, of justice outraged no less in form than in substance. Had they retired from this