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prostitute. It is not, however, upon this circumstance that I rest assured no reliance can be placed in Lady Douglas's testimony; but after what is proved, with regard to her evidence respecting my pregnancy and delivery in 1802, I am certain that any observations upon her testimony, or her veracity, must be flung away.

"Your Majesty has therefore now before you the state of the charge against me, as far as it respects Sir Sydney Smith. And this is, as I understand the Report, one of the charges which, with its unfavorable interpretations, must, in the opinion of the Commissioners, be credited till decidedly contradicted.

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"As to the facts of frequent visiting on terms of great intimacy, as I have said before, they cannot be contradicted at all. How inferences and unfavorable interpretations are to be decidedly contradicted, I wish the Commissioners had been so good as to explain. I know of no possible way, but by the declarations of myself and Sir Sydney Smith. Yet we being the supposed guilty parties, our denial, probably, will be thought of no great weight. As to my own, however, I tender it to Your Majesty, in the most solemn manner, and if I knew what fact it was that I ought to contradict, to clear my innocence, I would precisely address myself to that fact, as I am confident my conscience would enable me to do, to any, from which a criminal or an unbecoming inference could be drawn. I am sure, however, Your Majesty will feel for the humiliated and degraded situation

to which this Report has reduced your Daughterin-law, the Princess of Wales; when you see her reduced to the necessity of either risking the danger, that the most unfavorable interpretations should be credited; or else of stating, as I am now degraded to the necessity of stating, that not only no adulterous or criminal, but no indecent or improper intercourse whatever, ever subsisted between Sir Sydney Smith and myself, or any thing which I should have objected, that all the world should have seen. 1 say degraded to the necessity of stating it; for Your Majesty must feel that a woman's character is degraded, when it is put upon her to make such statement, at the peril of the contrary being credited, unless she decidedly contradicts it. Sir Sydney Smith's absence from the country, prevents my calling upon him to attest the same truth. But I trust when Your Majesty shall find, as you will find, that my declaration to a similar effect, with respect to the other gentlemen referred to in this Report, is confirmed by their denial, that Your Majesty will think that in a case, where nothing but my own word can be adduced, my own word alone may be opposed to whatever little remains of credit or weight, may, after all the above observations, be supposed yet to belong to Mr. Cole, to his inferences, his insinuations, or his facts. Not indeed that I have yet finished my. observations on Mr. Cole's credit; but I must reserve the remainder, till I consider his evidence, with respect to Mr. Lawrence; and till I have occasion to comment upon the testi

mony of Fanny Lloyd. Then indeed, I shall be under the necessity of exhibiting to Your Majesty these witnesses, Fanny Lloyd and Mr. Cole, (both of whom are represented as so unbiassed and so credible,) in flat, decisive, and irreconcilable contradiction to each other.

"The next person, with whom my improper intimacy is insinuated, is Mr. Lawrence the painter.

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"The principal witness on this charge is also Mr. Cole: Mr. R. Bidgood says nothing about him: Fanny Lloyd says nothing about him ; and all that Mrs. Lisle says, is perfectly true, and I am neither able, nor feel interested to contradict it. That she remembers my sitting to Mr. Lawrence for my picture at Blackheath, and in London; that she has left me at his house in town with him, but she thinks Mrs. Fitzgerald was with us; and that she thinks I sat alone with him at Blackheath." But Mr. Cole speaks of Mr. Lawrence, in a manner that calls for particular observation. He says, "Mr. Lawrence the painter used to go to Montague House about the end of 1801, when he was painting the Princess, and he has slept in the house two or three nights together. I have often seen him alone with the Princess at eleven or twelve o'clock at night. He has been there as late as one and two o'clock in the morning. One night I saw him with the Princess in the Blue Room, after the ladies had retired. Some time afterwards, when I supposed he had gone to his room, I went to see that all was safe, and I found the Blue Room door locked, and

heard a whispering in it; and I went away." Here again, Your Majesty observes, that Mr. Cole deals his deadliest blows against my character by insinuation. And here again, his insinuation is left unsifted and unexplained. I here understand him to insinuate that, though he supposed Mr. Lawrence to have gone to his room, he was still where he had said he last left him ; and that the locked door prevented him from seeing me and Mr. Lawrence alone together, whose whispering however, he, notwithstanding, overheard.

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"Before, Sire, I come to my own explanation of the fact of Mr. Lawrence's sleeping at Montague House, I must again refer to Mr. Cole's original declarations. I must again examine Mr. Cole, against Mr. Cole; which I cannot help lamenting it does not seem to have occurred to others, to have done; as I am persuaded if it had, his prevarications, and his falsehood could never have escaped them. They would then have been able to have traced, as Your Majesty will now do, through my observations, by what degrees he hardened himself up to the infamy (for I can use no other expression) of stating this fact, by which he means to insinuate that he heard me and Mr. Lawrence, locked up in the Blue Room, whispering together, and alone. I am sorry to be obliged to drag Your Majesty through so long a detail; but I am confident Your Majesty's goodness and love of justice will excuse it, as it is essential to the vindication of my character, as well as the illustration of Mr. Cole's.

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"Mr. Cole's examination, as contained in his first written declaration of the 11th of January, has nothing of this. I mean not to say that it has nothing concerning Mr. Lawrence, for it has much, which is calculated to occasion unfavourable interpretations, and given with a view to that object. But that circumstance, as I submit to Your Majesty, increases the weight of my observation. Had there been nothing in his first declaration about Mr. Lawrence at all, it might have been imagined, that perhaps Mr. Lawrence escaped his recollection altogether; or that his declaration had been solely directed to other persons; but as it does contain observations respecting Mr. Lawrence, but nothing of a locked door, or the whispering within it;-how he happened at that time not to recollect, or if he recollected, not to mention so very striking and remarkable a circumstance, is not, I should imagine, very satisfactorily to be explained. His statement in that first declaration runs thus: "In 1801, Lawrence, the painter, "was at Montague House, for four or five days " at a time, painting the Princess's picture. That " he was frequently alone late in the night with the "Princess, and much suspicion was entertained "of him." Mr. Cole's next declaration, at least the next which appear among the written declarations, was taken on the 14th of January ; it does not mention Mr. Lawrence's name, but it has this passage. When Mr. Cole found the drawing-room, which led to the staircase of the Princess's apartments, locked, (which Your

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