ment, surely, and not Mrs. Lisle's. Mrs. Lisle's judgment was formed upon those facts which she stated to the Commissioners, or upon other facts. If upon those she stated, the Commissioners and Your Majesty, are as well able to form the judgment upon them, as she was. If upon other facts, the Commissioners should have heard what those other facts were, and upon them have formed and reported their judgment.

I am aware indeed, that if I were to argue that the facts which Mrs. Lisle states, afford the explanation of what she means by "only flirting conduct," and by "behaviour unbecoming a married woman;" namely, that it consisted in having the same gentleman to dine with me three or four times a week ;-letting him sit next me at dinner, when there were no other strangers in company;-conversing with him separately, and appearing to prefer his conversation to that of the ladies,-it would be observed probably, that this was not all; that there was always a certain indescribable something in manner, which gave the character to conduct, and must have entered mainly into such a judgment, as Mrs. Lisle has here pronounced.

"To a certain extent I should be obliged to agree to this; but if I am to have any prejudice from this observation; if it is to give a weight and authority to Mrs. Lisle's judgment, let me have the advantage of it also. If it justifies the conclusions that Mrs. Lisle's censure upon my conduct is right, it requires also that equal credit

should be given to the qualification, the limit, and the restriction, which she herself puts upon that censure.

"Mrs. Lisle, seeing all the facts which she relates, and observing much of manner, which perhaps she could not describe, limits the expression 'flirting conduct," by calling it "only flirting;" and says, (upon having the question asked to her, no doubt, whether from the whole she could collect, that I was attached to Captain Manby)—" she could not say whether I was attached to him, my conduct was not of a nature that proved any attachment to him, it was only a flirting conduct." Unjust, therefore, as I think it, that any such question should have been put to Mrs. Lisle, or that her judgment should have been taken at all; yet, what I fear from it, as pressing with peculiar hardship upon me, is, that though it is Mrs. Lisle's final and ultimate judgment upon the whole of my conduct; yet, when delivered to Commissioners and Your Majesty, it becomes evidence, which, connected with all the facts on which Mrs. Lisle had formed it, may lead to still further and more unfavorable conclusions, in the minds of those who are afterwards to judge upon it ;-that her judgment will be the foundation of other judgments against me, much severer than her own; and that though she evidently limits her opinion, and by saying, "ONLY flirting," "ONLY flirting," impliedly negatives it as affording any indication of any thing more improper, while she proceeds expressly. to negative it, as affording any proof of attach

ment; yet it may be thought by others, to justify their considering it as a species of conduct, which shewed an attachment to the man to whom it was addressed; which, in a married woman, was criminal and wrong.

What Mrs. Lisle exactly means by only flirting conduct-what degree of impropriety of conduct she would describe by it, it is extremely difficult, with any precision, to ascertain. How many women are there, most virtuous, most truly modest, incapable of any thing impure, vicious or immoral, in deed or thought, who, from greater vivacity of spirits, from less natural reserve, from that want of caution, which the very consciousness of innocence betrays them into, conduct themselves in a manner which a woman of graver character, of more reserved disposition, but not with one particle of superior virtue, thinks too incautious, too unreserved, too familiar ; and which, if forced upon her oath to give her opinion upon it, she might feel herself, as an honest woman, bound to say in that opinion, was flirting?

"But whatever sense Mrs. Lisle annexes to the word "flirting," it is evident, as I said before, that she cannot mean any thing criminal, vicious, or indecent, or any thing with the least shade of deeper impropriety than what is necessarily expressed in the word " flirting." She never would have added, as she does in both instances, that it is was ONLY flirting; if she had thought it of a quality to be recorded in a formal Report, amongst circumstances which must occasion the

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most unfavourable interpretations, and which deserved the most serious consideration of Your Majesty. To use it so, I am sure Your Majesty must see, is to press it far beyond the meaning which she would assign to it herself.

"And as I have admitted that there may be much indescribable in the manner of doing any thing, so it must be admitted to me that there is much indescribable, and most material also in the manner of saying any thing, and in the accent with which it is said. The whole context serves much to explain it; and if it is in answer to a question, the words of that question, the manner and the accent in which it is asked, are also most material to understand the precise meaning, which the expressions are intended to convey; and I must lament, therefore, extremely, if my character is to be affected by the opinion of any witness, that the questions by which that opinion was drawn from her, were not given too, as well as her answers; and if this Inquiry had been prosecuted before Your Majesty's Privy Council, the more solemn and usual course of proceeding there, would, as I am informed, have furnished, or enabled me to furnish, Your Majesty with the questions as well as the answers.

"Mrs. Lisle, it should also be observed, was at the time of her examination under the severe oppression of having but a few days before heard of the death of her daughter; a daughter who had been happily married, and who had lived happily with her husband, in mutual attach

ment till her death. The very circumstance of her then situation, would naturally give a graver and severer cast to her opinions. When the question was proposed to her, as a general question, (and I presume it must have been so put to her) whether my conduct was such as would become a married woman, possibly her own daughter's conduct, and what she would have expected of her, might present itself to her mind. And I confidently submit to Your Majesty's better judgment, that such a general question, ought not, in a fair and candid consideration of my case, to have been put to Mrs. Lisle, or any other woman. For, as to my conduct being, or not being, becoming a married woman; the same conduct, or any thing like it, which may occur in my case, could not occur in the case of a married woman, who was not living in my unfortunate situation; or, if it did occur, it must occur under circumstances which must give it, and most deservedly, a very different character. A married woman, living well and happily with her husband, could not be frequently having one gentleman at her table, with no other company but ladies of her family; she could not be spending her evenings frequently in the same society, and separately conversing with that gentleman, unless either with the privity and consent of her husband, or by taking advantage, with some management, of his ignorance and his absence; if it was with his privity and consent, that very circumstance alone would unquestionably alter the character of such conduct; if with manage