the presence of the Earl of Moira; (as your Majesty will perceive by the deposition of Jonathan Partridge,) and as I know also, and make appear to Your Majesty likewise by the same means, that declarations of persons of unquestionable credit respecting my conduct, attesting my innocence, and directly falsifying a most important circumstance respecting my supposed pregnancy, - mentioned in the declarations on which the Inquiry was instituted; as I know, I say, that those declarations, so favourable to me, appear to my infinite prejudice, not to have been communicated to Your Majesty, when that Inquiry was commanded; and as I know not how soon, or how often, proceedings against me may be meditated by my enemies, I take leave to express my humble trust, that, before any other proceedings may be had against me, (desirable as it may have been thought, that the Inquiry should have been of the nature which has, in this instance, obtained,) Your Majesty would be graciously pleased to require to be advised, whether my guilt, if I were guilty, could not be as effectually discovered and punished, and my honor and innocence, if innocent, be more effectually secured and established, by other more known and regular modes of proceeding. "Having, therefore, Sire, upon these grave reasons, ventured to submit, I trust without offence, these considerations upon the nature of the commission, and the proceedings under it, I will now proceed to observe upon the Report, and the Examinations; and, with Your Majesty's permission, I will go through the whole matter, in that course which has been observed by the Report itself, and which an examination of the important matters that it contains, in the order in which it states them, will naturally suggest. "The Report, after referring to the commission or warrant under which their Lordships were acting, after stating that they had proceeded to examine the several witnesses, whose depositions they annexed to the Report, proceeds to state the effect of the written declarations, which the Commissioners considered as the essential foundation of the whole proceeding. "That they were statements which had been laid before His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, respecting the conduct of her Royal Highness the Princess; that these statements not only imputed to Her Royal Highness, great impropriety, and indecency of behaviour, but expressly asserted, partly on the ground of certain alleged declarations from the Princess's own mouth, and partly on the personal observations of the informants, the following most important facts; viz. "that Her Royal Highness had been pregnant in the year 1802, in consequence of an illicit intercourse; and that she had in the same year, been secretly delivered of a male child; which child had ever since that period, been brought up by Her Royal Highness in her own house, and under her immediate inspection." These allegations thus made, had, as the Commissioners found, been followed by declarations from other persons, who had not indeed spoken to the im portant facts of the pregnancy or the delivery of Her Royal Highness, but had related other particulars, in themselves extremely suspicious, and still more so, when connected with the assertions already mentioned. The Report then states that, "in the painful situation in which His Royal Highness was placed by these declarations, they learned that he had adopted the only course which could, in their judgment, with propriety be followed, when informations such as these, had been thus confidently alleged and particularly detailed, and had in some degree been supported by collateral evidence, applying to other points of the same nature, (though going to a far less extent,) one line could only be pursued." Every sentiment of duty to Your Majesty, and of concern for the public welfare, required that these particulars should not be withheld from Your Majesty, to whom more particularly belonged the cognizance of a matter of state, so nearly touching the honor of Your Majesty's Royal Family, and by possibility affecting the succession to Your Majesty's crown. "The Commissioners therefore, Your Majesty observes, going, they must permit me to say, a little out of their way, begin their Report by expressing a clear and decided opinion, that His Royal Highness was properly advised, (for Your Majesty will undoubtedly conclude, that upon a subject of this importance, His Royal Highness could not but have acted by the advice of others,) in referring this complaint to Your Majesty, for the purpose of its undergoing the And un investigation which has followed. questionably, if the charge referred to in this Report, as made by Sir John and Lady Douglas, had been presented under circumstances, in which any reasonable degree of credit could be given to them, or even if they had not been presented in such a manner as to impeach the credit of the informers, and to bear internal evidence of their own incredibility, I should be the last person who would be disposed to dispute the wisdom of the advice which led to make them the subject of the gravest and most anxious Inquiry. And Your Majesty, acting upon a mere abstract of the declarations, which was all, that by the recital of the warrant, appears to have been laid before Your Majesty, undoubtedly could not but direct an Inquiry, concerning my conduct. For though I have not been furnished with that abstract, yet I must presume that it described the criminatory contents of these declarations, much in the same manner as they are stated in the Report. And criminatory parts of these declarations, if viewed without reference to those traces of malice and resentment, with which the declarations of Sir John and Lady Douglas abound; if abstracted from all these circumstances, which shew the extreme improbability of the story, the length of time which my accusers had kept my alleged guilt concealed, the contradictions observable in the declarations of the other witnesses, all which I submit to Your Majesty, are to an extent to cast the greatest discredit upon the truth of these - declarations; abstracted, I say, from these circumstances, the criminatory parts of them were unquestionably such, as to have placed Your Majesty under the necessity of directing some Inquiry concerning them. But that those, who had the opportunity of reading the long and malevolent narrative of Sir John and Lady Douglas, should not have hesitated before they gave any credit to it, is matter of the greatest astonishment to me. "The improbability of the story, would of itself, I should have imagined, (unless they believed me to be as insane as Lady Douglas insinuates,) have been sufficient to have staggered the belief of any unprejudiced mind. For, to believe that story, they were to begin with believing that a person guilty of so foul a crime, so highly penal, so fatal to her honor, her station, and her life, should gratuitously and uselessly have confessed it. Such a person, under the necessity of concealing her pregnancy, might have been indispensably obliged to confide her secret with those, to whom she was to look for assistance in concealing its consequences. But Lady Douglas, by her own account, was informed by me of this fact, for no purpose whatever. She makes me, as those who read her declarations cannot fail to have observed, state to her, that she should on no account be entrusted with any part of the management by which the birth was to be concealed. They were to believe also, that, anxious as I must have been to have concealed the birth of any such child, I had deter |