Chapter IV, of Cassells Illustrated History of England, Volume 7 page 3

In reference to his promise that she should have a tranquil and comfortable home, she proceeded: -

"But, alas! even tranquillity and comfort were too much for me to enjoy. From the very threshold of your majesty's mansion the mother of your child was pursued by spies, conspirators, and traitors, employed, encouraged, and rewarded, to lay snares for the feet, and to plot against the reputation and life of her whom your majesty had so recently and so solemnly vowed to honour, to love, and to cherish.

"In withdrawing from the embraces of my parents, in giving my hand to the son of George III., and the heir apparent to the British throne, nothing less than a voice from heaven would have made me fear injustice or wrong of any kind. What, then, was my astonishment at finding that treasons against me had been carried on and matured, perjuries against me had been methodised and embodied, a secret tribunal had been held, a trial of my actions had taken place, and a decision had been made upon those actions, without my having been informed of the nature of the charge, or of the names of the witnesses? And what words can express the feelings excited by the fact, that this proceeding was founded on a request made, and on evidence furnished, by order of the father of my child, and my natural as well as legal guardian and protector?

"Notwithstanding, however, the unprecedented conduct of that tribunal - conduct which has since undergone, even in parliament, severe and unanswered animadversions, and which has been also censured in minutes of the privy council - notwithstanding the secrecy of the proceedings of this tribunal - notwithstanding the strong temptation to the giving of false evidence against me before it - notwithstanding that there was no opportunity afforded me of rebutting that evidence - notwithstanding all these circumstances, so decidedly favourable to my enemies - even this secret tribunal acquitted me of all crime, and thereby pronounced my principal accusers to have been guilty of the grossest perjury. But it was now (after the trial was over) discovered that the nature of the tribunal was such as to render false swearing before it not legally criminal! And thus, at the suggestion and request of your majesty, had been created, to take cognisance of, and try my conduct, a tribunal, competent to administer oaths, competent to examine witnesses on oath, competent to try, competent to acquit or condemn, and competent, moreover, to screen those who had sworn falsely against me from suffering the pains and penalties which the law awards to wilful and corrupt perjury. Great as my indignation naturally must have been at this shameful evasion of law and justice, that indignation was lost in pity for him who could lower his princely plumes to the dust, by giving his countenance and favour to the most conspicuous of those abandoned and notorious perjurers.

"Still there was one whose upright mind nothing could warp, in whose breast injustice never found a place, whose hand was always ready to raise the unfortunate, and to rescue the oppressed. While that good and gracious father and sovereign remained in the exercise of his royal functions, his unoffending daughter-in-law had nothing to fear. As long as the protecting hand of your late ever beloved and ever lamented father was held over me, I was safe. But the melancholy event which deprived the nation of the active exertions of its virtuous king, bereft me of my friend and protector, and of all hope of future tranquillity and safety. To calumniate your innocent wife was now the shortest road to royal favour; and to betray her was to lay the sure foundation to boundless riches and titles of honour. Before claims like these, talent, virtue, long services, your own personal friendships, your royal engagements, promises, and pledges, written as well as verbal, melted into air. Your cabinet was founded on this basis. You took to your councils men of whose persons, as well as whose principles, you had invariably expressed the strongest dislike. The interest of the nation, and even your own feelings, in all other respects, were sacrificed to the gratification of your desire to aggravate my sufferings and insure my humiliation. You took to your councils and your bosom men whom you hated, whose abandonment of and whose readiness to sacrifice me were their only merits, and whose power has been exercised in a manner, and has been attended with consequences, worthy of its origin. From this unprincipled and unnatural union have sprung the manifold evils which this nation has now to endure, and which present a mass of misery and of degradation, accompanied with acts of tyranny and cruelty, rather than have seen which inflicted on his industrious, faithful, and brave people, your royal father would have perished at the head of that people.

"When to calumniate, revile, and betray me became the sure path to honour and riches, it would have been strange, indeed, if calumniators, revilers, and traitors had not abounded. Your court became much less a scene of polished manners and refined intercourse than of low intrigue and scurrility. Spies, bacchanalian tale-bearers, and foul conspirators swarmed in those places which had been before the resort of sobriety, virtue, and honour. To enumerate all the various privations and mortifications which I had to endure, all the insults that were wantonly heaped upon me, from the day of your elevation to the regency to that of my departure for the continent, would be to describe every species of personal offence that can be offered to, and every pain short of bodily violence that can be inflicted on, any human being. Bereft of parent, brother, and father-in-law, and my husband for my deadliest foe - seeing those who have promised me support bought by rewards to be amongst my enemies - restrained from accusing my foes in the face of the world, out of regard for the character of the father of my child, and from a desire to prevent her happiness from being disturbed - shunned, from motives of selfishness, by those who were my natural associates - living in obscurity, while I ought to have been the centre of all that was splendid: thus humbled, I had one consolation left - the love of my dear and only child. To permit me to enjoy this was too great an indulgence. To see my daughter, to fold her in my arms, to mingle my tears with hers, to receive her cheering caresses, and to hear from her lips assurances of never-ceasing love - thus to be comforted, consoled, upheld, and blessed, was too much to be allowed me. Even on the slave-mart the cries of 1 Oh, my mother! my mother! oh, my child! ' have prevented a separation of the victims of avarice. But your advisers, more inhuman than the slave-dealers, remorselessly tore the mother from the child.

"Thus bereft of the society of my child, or reduced to the necessity of embittering her life by struggles to preserve that society, I resolved on a temporary absence, in the hope that time might restore me to her in happier days. Those days, alas! were never to come. To mothers, and those mothers who have been suddenly bereft of the best and most affectionate and only daughter, it belongs to estimate my sufferings and my wrongs. Such mothers will judge of my affliction upon hearing of the death of my child, and upon my calling to recollection the last look, the last words, and all the affecting circumstances of our separation. Such mothers will see the depth of my sorrows. Every being, with a heart of humanity in his bosom, will drop a tear in sympathy with me. And will not the world, then, learn with indignation that this event, calculated to soften the hardest heart, was the signal for new conspiracies and indefatigable efforts for the destruction of this afflicted mother? Your majesty had torn my child from me; you had deprived me of the power of being at hand to succour her; you had taken from me the possibility of hearing of her last prayers for her mother; you saw me bereft, forlorn, and brokenhearted; and this was the moment you chose for redoubling your persecutions.

" Let the world pass its judgment on the constituting of a commission, in a foreign country, consisting of inquisitors, spies, and informers, to discover, collect, and arrange matters of accusation against your wife, without any complaint having been communicated to her; let the world judge of the employment of ambassadors in such a business, and of the enlisting of foreign courts in the enterprise; but on the measures which have been adopted to give final effect to these preliminary proceedings, it is for me to speak, it is for me to remonstrate with your majesty, it is for me to protest, it is for me to apprise you of my determination."

The conduct of lord Eldon, as president of the august court, is admitted to have been dignified, if not wholly impartial. The summing up in his speech on the second reading was very able. He said: - "But, my lords, the ground of the opinion which I am about to state to your lordships s this: - Laying aside all the testimony in this case which can by possibility be suspected, I ask myself this question - Does the unsuspected evidence which has been produced in support of this bill, and does the testimony which has been produced in reply, together with the negative evidence or the want of that evidence which might have been produced in reply - I say again, laying aside all evidence liable to suspicion, or which has been contradicted, does the unimpeached testimony which has been produced on the one side - connected with the positive testimony and the negative testimony, or want of evidence which might have been produced on the other - support the allegation of an adulterous intercourse, or does it not?

"The course which I shall take is of this nature; and I am now about to state the opinion which, after the most painful and anxious attention, that course compels me to form. I apprehend, then - at least, my lords, so it seems to me - that if we look at one or two of the cases or circumstances which have been proved at your lordships bar by witnesses entirely beyond suspicion, to whom suspicion has never attached during the whole of these proceedings -, and if we then look at the situation and history of the person with whom the act of adultery is alleged to have been committed, it appears to me, from this view of the subject - I am very sorry to say it, but I cannot shrink from the duty of saying it - that we cannot possibly draw any other inference but that there has been an adulterous intercourse.

"My lords, with respect to the negative evidence of the bill - the want of contradiction to the evidence in support of the bill - it is my duty to say that I have frequently thought more effect has been given than ought to have been given in what is called the summing-up of a judge on a trial, to the fact that there has not been the contradiction on the part of the defence, which it is supposed the witnesses for the accusation might have received; for, my lords, we ought to look at the circumstances of the case in which this absence of contradiction occurs. It may often happen that, in the course of a trial, circumstances are proved which have no bearing on the real question at issue; and it may also happen that facts are alleged and sworn to by witnesses which it is impossible for the accused party to contradict; circumstances may be stated by witnesses which are untrue, yet they cannot be contradicted, because the party injured by them, not expecting that that which never had any existence would be attempted to be proved, cannot be prepared with opposing witnesses. So, also, in cases in which an individual witness speaks to occurrences at which no other person was present but himself, there it may be absolutely impossible to contradict him. But, my lords, in a case of which the facts sworn to by a witness are sworn to have occurred in the presence of many individuals (which we know to be the case in the present instance) who are within the reach of the party whose interest it is to contradict such testimony, are not produced, then the want of that contradiction becomes a matter of great importance, and for many reasons. I have no right to impute to any man that he has given false or perjured testimony when other persons were present at the period to which his testimony refers, whom I have the power to call, but whom I decline calling. Unless I call those persons to contradict the witness, he is clearly entitled to credit. In my opinion, such a circumstance is a tacit admission of the fact by those whose interest it is to contest and deny it. If they do not contradict the fact by testimony which they have the means of producing, they tacitly admit that it is incapable of contradiction. The party who declines to avail himself of such an opportunity of disproving the evidence on the other side, so far from being entitled to impugn that evidence, confers additional credit upon the testimony which he thus leaves uncontradicted."

Lord Eldon then entered into an examination of the evidence upon this case in its principal points, and, having stated them in outline, he concluded thus: - "Such, my lords, is the view in which I regard this great question. There are many points of the case to which I have not alluded, and to which I do not intend to allude. But taking into my consideration all that has been sworn by unimpeached and uncontradicted witnesses; adverting to what passed, both while her majesty was on board the Palacre, and before and after that period at Aum, the Barona, the Villa d'Este, Carlsruhe, Catania, and elsewhere; referring to the various acts of familiarity which have been proved, and which there has been no attempt to deny; and recollecting the rapid and extraordinary promotion of this man and his family, and their having been all brought about her majesty's person, with the exception of his wife, I cannot withdraw myself from what appears to me to be an imperative duty, namely, to express my firm belief that an adulterous intercourse has taken place. I express that opinion because the positive act of adultery has not been seen, and could not have been seen. It is the language of the law that if the circumstances are such that a reasonable and plain man, addressing his mind dispassionately to the consideration of those circumstances, and to the principles of conduct by which human nature is governed, cannot but infer the commission of the crime, it is sufficient, although the absolute fact itself has not been proved. Of the maxims of law, as to legal presumption, I am sure. Whether or not your lordships think that such a case as that which I have described has been made out, is another question.