expressly states that she gives it under the direct command of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, and the papers leave me without information, from whom any communication to the Prince orignated, which induced him to give such commands.

"Upon the question how far the advice is agreeable to law, under which it was recommended to Your Majesty to issue this warrant, or commission, not countersigned, nor under seal, and without any of Your Majesty's advisers therefore, being on the face of it, responsible for its issuing, I am not competent to determine. And undoubtedly considering that the two high legal authorities, the Lord Chancellor, and the Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench, consented to act under it, it is with the greatest doubt and diffidence, that I can bring myself to express any suspicion of its illegality. But if it be, as I am given to understand it is, open to question, whether, consistently with law, Your Majesty should have been advised to command by this warrant or commision, persons (not to act in any known character, as Secretaries of State, as Privy Counsellors, as Magistrates otherwise empowered; but) to act as Commissioners, and under the sole authority of such warrant, to inquire (without any authority to hear and determine any thing upon the subject of those inquiries), into the known crime of High Treason, under the sanction of oaths, to be administered by them, as such Commissioners, and to report the result thereof to Your Majesty; if, I say, there can

be any question on the legality of such a warrant or commission, the extreme hardship with which it has operated upon me, the extreme prejudice which it has done to my character, and to which such a proceeding must ever expose the object of it, obliges me, till I am fully convinced of its legality, to forbear from acknowledging its authority; and with all humility and deference to Your Majesty, to protest against it, and against all the proceedings under it.

"If this, indeed, were matter of mere form, I should be ashamed to urge it. But the actual hardships and prejudices, which I have suffered by this proceeding, are most obvious. For, upon the principal charge against me, the Commissioners have most satisfactorily, and "without the least hesitation," (for such is their expression,) reported their opinion of its falsehood. Sir John and Lady Douglas therefore, who have sworn to its truth, have been guilty of the plainest falsehood; yet, upon the supposition of the illegality of this commission, their falsehood must, as 1 am informed, go unpunished. Upon that supposition, the want of legal authority in the Commissioners, to inquire and to administer an oath, will render it impossible to give to this falsehood, the character of perjury. But this is by no means the circumstance which I feel most severely. Beyond the vindicating of my own character, and the consideration of providing for my future security, I can assure Your Majesty, that the punishment of Sir John and Lady Douglas, would afford me no satisfaction. It is not therefore,

with regard to that part of the charge which is negatived, but with respect to those, which are sanctioned by the Report; those, which, not aiming at my life, exhaust themselves upon my character, and which the Commissioners have in some measure sanctioned by their Report, that I have the greater reason to complain. Had the Report sanctioned the principal charge, constituting a known legal crime, my innocence would have emboldened me, at all risks, (and to more no person has ever been exposed from the malice and falsehood of accusers) to have demanded that trial, which could legally determine upon the truth or falsehood of such charge. Though I should even then indeed have had some cause to complain, because I should have gone to that trial,under the prejudice necessarily raised against me, by that Report; yet, in a proceeding before the just, open, and known tribunals of Your Majesty's kingdom, I should have had a safe appeal from the result of an ex parte investigation. An investigation, which has exposed me to all the hardships of a secret Inquiry, without giving me the benefit of secrecy; and to all the severe consequences of a public investigation, in point of injury to my character, without affording me any of its substantial benefits, in point of security. But the charges, which the Commissioners do sanction by their Report, describing them with a mysterious obscurity and indefinite generality, -constitute, as I am told, no legal crime. They are described as "instances of great impropriety and indecency of behaviour," which must "occa

sion the most unfavourable interpretations," and they are reported to Your Majesty, and they are stated to be, "circumstances which must be credited, till they are decisively contradicted."

"From this opinion, this judgment of the Commissioners, bearing so hard upon my character, (and that a female character, how delicate, and how easily to be affected by the breath of calumny, Your Majesty knows) I can have no appeal. For, as the charges constitute no legal crimes, they cannot be the subject of any legal trial. I can call for no trial. I can therefore have no appeal. I can look for no acquittal. Yet this opinion, or this judgment, from which I can have no appeal, has been pronounced against me, upon mere ex parte investigation.

"This hardship, Sire, I am told to ascribe to the nature of the proceeding under this warrant or commission; for had the Inquiry been entered into before Your Majesty's Privy Council, or before any magistrates authorized by law as such, to inquire into the existence of treason, the known course of proceeding before that council, or such magistrates, the known extent of their jurisdiction over crimes, and not over the proprieties of behaviour, would have preserved me from the possibility of having matters made the subjects of Inquiry, which had in law no substantive criminal character, and from the extreme hardship of having my reputation injured by calumny altoge ther unfounded, but rendered at once more safe to my enemies, and more injurious to me, by being uttered in the course of a proceeding,

assuming the grave semblance of legal form. And it is by the nature of this proceeding, (which could alone have countenanced or admitted of this licentious latitude of inquiry, into the proprieties of behaviour in private life, with which no court, no magistrate, no public law, has any authority to interfere,) that I have been deprived of the benefit of that entire and unqualified acquittal and discharge from this accusation, to which the utter and proved falsehood of the accusation itself, so justly entitled me. I trust therefore, that Your Majesty will see, that if this proceeding is not one, to which, by the known laws of Your Majesty's kingdom, I ought to be subject, that it is no cold, formal objection, which leads me to protest against it.

"I am ready to acknowledge, Sire, from the consequences which might arise to the public, from such misconduct as hath been falsely imputed to me, that my honor and virtue are of more importance to the state, than those of other women. That my conduct, therefore, may be fitly subjected, when necessary, to a severer scrutiny. But it cannot follow, because my character is of more importance, that it may therefore be attacked with more impunity. And as I know that this mischief has been pending over my head for more than two years, that private examinations of my neighbours' servants, and of my own, have at times, during that interval, been taken for the purpose of establishing charges against me, not indeed by the instrumentality of Sir John and Lady Douglas alone, but by the sanction, and in