generally understood, that the contents of the green bug were obtained through the means of certain persons, commissioned to go to Milan, and to procure all the information they could on the subject of the queen's conduct. Common rumour did not point at ministers as the inventors of this plan-that honour was given to another person-the vice-chancellor of England. In order to get at the facts, Sir J. Leach recommended a person who had practised in the same court with himself long and successfully. One of his qualifications for the situation was rather extraordinary, for it appeared that he understood no language beyond his native tongue. A second, and, he be lieved, a third individual, were added to the commission. Το prove that the vice-chancellor was at the head of this army of espionnage, it was only necessary to observe, that he himself went to Milan in 1818, and remained there till September 19th in that year. The expense attending this commission had been very great indeed. He understood that it had cost the country 23,000. In the first five months of its existence, a sum of no less than 11,000. was drawn by these commissioners. Now, he would engage for half that money to procure such witnesses in Italy, as would blast the character of any man or woman, however respectable.

Lord Castlereagh, though he resisted the motion as unseasonable, declared that he had no hesitation in stating distinctly the true circumstances of the case. They were simply these :The statements concerning the conduct of her majesty reached ministers from so many quarters,

and had become so notorious here (statements, let it be observed, that were not procured by any system of fishing, but which came voluntarily from various quarters, many of them of the most grave and official character), that it was deemed necessary to inquire into their accuracy. For this purpose, certain persons were sent out. Their orders were, to look to every thing that could be devised in reason, to detect and separate falsehood from truth. With respect to the characters of the persons employed, application was made to a gentleman at the chancery bar, Mr. Cooke, for his assistance. There was no man in the country, he believed, who had the honour of his acquaintance, that did not respect him. When the business was of so delicate a nature, it was most proper to employ an individual of grave and thinking habits. The gallant general said, an individual was selected, who knew nothing of foreign languages. This, he conceived, was a pledge that nothing more was intended, but that the individual should go to the appointed place, merely to hear the evidence as a professional man. It showed, that he was not sent out to insinuate himself as a spy into those transactions, but that he was specifically sent out as a person, who, when the witnesses that were to substantiate the facts catne before him, was ready to take their depositions, and to take them in that form which was suitable to the practice of our jurisprudence, and surrounded with all those safeguards by which our law was characterised, The expense attending the alle gations on the one side, and the preparations for meeting them on

tendency, to irritate the public mind, and calling for the immediate restoration of the property, of which her majesty had been thus unjustly deprived.

Dr. Lushington's eloquence was destroyed in a moment by a simple statement from lord Castlereagh. The noble lord informed the House, that the greatest part of this service of plate was old plate belonging to king William, which had been converted to the queen's use; and so little was it anticipated, that she should use it as her own property, that a formal list had been made out of the articles in the books of the lord chamberlain, of which the following was the title-"A list of his majesty's plate, in loan, to the princess of Wales, while residing in Kensington-palace." This list was in existence at the time when the plate was reclaimed; and if her majesty had used it elsewhere than in Kensington-palace, she had exercised a discretion which was not warranted. When her majesty was about to visit the continent in 1814, she desired her servants to pack up this plate, with the intention of taking it with her; it was actually packed up for that purpose; and if the lord chamberlain had not sent a note on the subject to Mr. Mash, it would have gone out of the country; and if it had gone out of the country, he did not know-perhaps the learned gentleman could inform him-by what process it could have been brought back. His lordship, before he concluded, commented, in very severe terms, on the impropriety of which Dr. Lushington had been guilty in bringing such a subject before the public, and in loading ministers with the most opprobrious epi

thets, without having ever taken the trouble to investigate the transaction. So complete was the overthrow of Dr. Lushington, that the very warmest partisans of her majesty in the House, were forced to allow, that he had no grounds for his motion.

If, in this transaction, Dr. Lushington was justly chargeable with precipitation and negligence. others must have been guilty of gross deception. The queen must have been aware, that the plate was not her property, and that what had belonged to king William, could not have been made according to her own taste. Prudence, indeed, would, in most cases, have prevented any attempt to palm such misrepresentations on the world; but, where the defence of her majesty was concerned, there was no falsehood so gross as not to be swallowed by the public.

It must, however, be admitted, that virulence and intemperance were not confined to one side only. If, on the one hand, the most scandalous falsehoods were propagated against all who had any share in the proceedings against her majesty; so, on the other hand, she was herself loaded with much indecent abuse, equally at variance with justice and with generous feeling. Among these libels was one of a very gross nature, which had appeared in a newspaper called "The Western Luminary;" and this was, on the 25th of July, brought under the notice of parliament by Mr. Wetherall, who made a motion, declaring it to be a breach of the privileges of the House. Lord Castlereagh joined with the honourable mover in condemning such calumniatory publications, but

argued, that the House, if it interfered at all, must interfere on both sides, and would then find, that it had entangled itself in transactions, which it was not well qualified to deal with. The noble lord read some extracts from late publications on the subject of the parliamentary proceedings concerning the queen, and intimated, that, if the motion was persisted in, he should consider it his duty to bring them under the animadversion of the House. The following is one of the passages to which allusion was made on this occasion, and we quote it as a specimen of the audacious means that were every day employed to work upon the public mind:

"We have very little hopes," faid this libeller, "that the divorce bill will be rejected in such a parliament as the present, because we know, and have seen, that they are sufficiently profligate and servile to act against the clearest testimony of innocence and right. Still this will matter nothing; the king and parliament must wipe off the disgrace which has so long hung about themselves before they can disgrace the queen in the public mind. The more she uffers, the more will she be endeared to the nation. never was in England a monarch more suspected and despised, nor a parliament more notoriously profligate, than at present. Was it not that they hold the pursestrings of the nation, they would be kicked out of all power in a few hours, and fairly swept out of the country. At present their doom is sealed, and the herald approaching with it."

There

Mr. Tierney could not regard the libel in the Western Luminary as a breach of privilege, and

thought the argument in defence of that proposition a great deal too refined. It rested entirely on their general knowledge, that the House of Lords had commenced a parliamentary proceeding with reference to the conduct of her majesty. This knowledge they had not acquired by a solemn message, but from an inspection of the Lords' Journals. By these it appeared, that the Lords, for reasons best known to themselves, had introduced a bill for the Queen's Degradation; but it did not appear that this bill would certainly pass, or that it would ever come before the House of Commons. The whole argument in support of the motion took it for granted, that the bill would inevitably be sent down to them; but he could join in no such presumption. If the publication complained of was a breach of privilege, it was a breach of the privileges of the other House, not of their own; and he must declare his inability to comprehend the overstrained reasoning, which would represent it otherwise. Whenever the House directed the attorney-general to prosecute, it took upon itself an odious and invidious office; because it sent an individual to trial under the heavy disadvantage of an opinion expressed by the House against him. On the fullest consideration he could give to the subject, he was inclined to think, that the wisest course would be to withdraw the motion.

The motion accordingly was withdrawn.

On the 21st of August, after the examination of witnesses be fore the House of Lords had actually begun, lord Castlereagh moved an adjournment, for four