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After this discourse of his Serene Highness Messieurs, the Counsellors of State, presented a Projet of organized Senatus Consultum, and M. Count Regnaud de Saint Jean d'Angely explained its motives.

Motives of the Senatus Consultum on the Regency of the Empire, the Coronation of the Empress, and the Coronation of the Prince Imperial of Rome.

Majesty has ordained that you should pre-matter so very serious, you will judge, sent him with a projet relative to the Re- Monsieur, that it will not be sufficient to gency. This part of our institution not weigh a few principles. The Legislature having yet been able to obtain such a de- extends its views still further, and without gree of perfection, as the laws received by aspiring to say every thing, it is a part of time, it has appeared useful to add more its duty to banish at first a number of extended dispositions to those already ex- doubts, and to suffer but few questions to isting, and at the same time the necessity subsist.- -Whatever, Gentlemen, may has been felt of reviving the usages in our be the utility of the dispositions on which constitutional anuals, founded on the an- we call for your suffrages, yet it is pleasing cient manners of the nation. Thus, the to hope, that according to the order of naplan which is submitted to you, will re- ture, their application will not occur until establish in its full latitude the uncontested a period of time distant and uncertain.right of the Sovereign to settle the Regency. Happy France, if all the Princes of this At all events it will prevent an excess august Dynasty should not come to the of precaution, by arbitrarily restraining throne until matured by age, animated by the powers of this said Regency from dena- glorious examples, and long nourished by turalizing the issue of the Monarchial Go- the lessons of wisdom! vernment.- -If the Emperor had not manifested his will, the Regency would, by course of right, appertain to the Empress. -Whatever the heart and understanding can suggest in such matter, with regard to private families, ought to apply to the great family of the state. None can have a greater degree of zeal than the Empress Mother, for preserving the authority of her charge free from all attempts. No one can, like her, present to the imagination of the people the imposing and proper remembrances, so as to render obedience noble and easy.A system of exclusion would constrain the choice of the Monarch. Prohibitory laws, by the restraint which they impose, frequently contain the seeds of discord.- -In defect of the Empress, there is an order established, so that there can be no uncertainty concerning the choice of a Regent. In this matter the law, in respecting hereditary rights, has been obliged to enter into all the details of foresight, and to adopt every wise precaution. The least interruption in the exercise of the Sovereign Power, would become a great calamity to the people. This power, during the minority of the Emperor, is to be exercised in his name, and in his sole behalf, by the Empress Regent, or by the Regent.- -After them the Council of Regency will concur in the decision of matters of great importance, and fortify their authority with all the weight of public opinion. The other articles of the Projet are either drawn from those which I have just announced, or relate to them.———In a

MONSEIGNEUR SENATORS,-To add new guarantees of stability to our institutions, to ensure in every case which experience can indicate, or prudence conceive, the uninterrupted action of government; to look forward with calm reflection on the absence of every interest, in the silence of all the passions, in banishing all sorrows, to the difficulties which embarrass a minority; this is the principal object of the important act which is prescribed to your deliberation.The motives which have dictated these dispositions, Gentlemen, are founded in the experience of nations, in the lessons of history, in the traditions of the French Monarchy, in the examples offered in its annals.It will consequently suffice rather to indicate than develope these motives, and in the hasty picture which I am going to make, I shall follow the methodical manner traced out by the Senatus Consultum.

TITLE I.

Of the Regency.

A Regency of the State. has never been (To be continued.)

Published by R. BAGSHAW, Brydges-Street, Covent-Garden.
LONDON: Printed by J. M'Creery, Black-Horse-Court, Fleet-street.

COBBETT'S WEEKLY POLITICAL REGISTER.

VOL. XXIII. No. 9.] LONDON, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1813. [Price 1s.

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The excellent effect which attended my letter to you, has made me resolve to discuss the present subject in the form of letters to you; a form, which, for various reasons, I have a great liking to, and which has always this strong recommendation, that it affords me an opportunity of proving to you that your friendship and that of your brother and children is always alive in my recollection. At this time, however, another motive has had some weight with me. I understand, that our Government has issued orders for causing all letters for your country to pass through its hands, or, which is the same thing, the hands of its agents; and, as I am resolved, that they shall never have the fingering of a letter of mine to America, I will put what I have to say into print, and then it can no more be impeded in its progress than can the clouds, or the rays of the sun.

In the case above alluded to, my letter did, I understand, settle all men's minds at once, as far as it went; and, as it was republished in America, it gives me great satisfaction to reflect on the extent of its influence. Nor was it without its uses here, where the people, at a distance from London, must, of course, know almost as little about the local circumstances of the case as the people in Pennsylvania themselves. Indeed the publication of that letter soon convinced me, that one ought not to take it for granted, that the mass of the people know much about particulars as to any sort of public matter; and that to suppose one's readers to be on the other side of the Atlantic is no bad way of making any case that one discusses quite clear to the people of England; nay, even to nine-tenths of those who walk, in decent clothes, about the streets of London itself.

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It is, therefore, in the full conviction that I shall communicate information to a great portion of the people here as well as to the eight millions of people who inhabit the United States, that I now renew my correspondence with you, leaving my promised communication, about the mode of keeping large quantities of sheep upon your farm, till the return of peace, lest, by fulfilling that promise at this time, I should subject myself to the charge of conveying comfort and giving assistance to the enemies of my Sovereign, than which, assuredly, nothing can be further from my heart.

of

The subject, upon which I now address you, is one of very great interest and of very great importance. It is interesting, as involving the reputation of per high rank; and it is important, as being capable of raising questions as to rights of most fearful magnitude.

You will have seen, in your own newspapers, copious extracts from our English daily papers upon the subject of Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales; but, these extracts you will find so confused, so dark, so contradictory, so unintelligible upon the whole, so topless and tail-less, that you will from them be able to draw no rational conclusion. You will see Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales abused by these journalists; you will see all sorts of charges by them preferred against her; you will hear one insinuation following another, till, at last, the ear sickens with the sound; but, you will find no where any clear statement of her case. Even her own Letter, which I shall, though for a second time, insert below for your perusal, does not go far enough back to produce that view of her case which ought to be exhibited, in order to a defence of her against the base insinuations which have, for a long while, been in circulation. In short, all that will reach your country, through the channel of these corrupt London Journalists, can only serve to mislead you as to the real merits of the case; and, even I, with a most earnest desire to lay before the world the means of forming a correct judgment, should fail of my object, were I not to revert to the earliest period of

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that connexion between the Princess and the Prince, which has, unhappily, been, for some years, interrupted.

It is generally well known, but not improper to state here, that the Princess of Wales is the Daughter of the late Duke of Brunswick, and that her mother is a sister of our present King. Of course she is a first cousin of the Prince her husband. They were married on the 8th of April, 1795, the Prince being then 32 years of age, and the Princess being 26 years of age; the former will be 51 the 12th day of next August, and the latter will be 45 on the 17th of next May. On the 7th of January, 1796, that is to say, precisely nine months from the day of their marriage, was born the Princess Charlotte of Wales, who, being their only child, is the heiress to the Throne, and who, of course, has now completed her 17th year.

Here you have an account of who the parties most concerned are, and of the how and the when of their connexion. But, there were some circumstances, connected with the marriage of the Prince and Princess, to which it will be necessary to go back, in order to have a fair view of the

matter.

The Prince, at the time when he was about to be married, in 1795, was greatly in debt. He had an annual allowance from the nation, besides the amount of certain revenues in the county of Cornwall belonging to him as Duke of that county. But, these proving insufficient to meet his expenses, he was found, in 1795, to have contracted debts to the amount of £639,890. 4s. 4d.; for we are very particular, in this country, in stating the fractions of sums in our public accounts. You will, perhaps, stare at this sum; but, you may depend upon my correcs in stating it, as I copy it from the documents laid before Parlia

ment.

When the Prince was married, a proposition was made to Parliament for the payment of this sum of debt, which, indeed, seems to have been stipulated for before the marriage; for, in the report of the debate upon the subject of the debts, the Duke of Clarence is stated to have said, "that, "when the marriage of the Prince of "Wales was agreed upon, there was a stipulation that he should be exonerated "from his debts." Much and long opposition was, however, made to the proposed payment by the country, and those who ..made this opposition contended, that, after having paid his debts, to a great amount,

in 1787, upon a clear understanding, that no more debts should be contracted on his account, the nation ought not to be called on again, and that the King ought to pay the debts out of his annual allowance, which we here call the Givil List, and which amounts to nearly half as much as your whole American revenue, though there are eight millions of you on whom to See how rich a nation raise that revenue. we must be!

The proposition was, however, at last agreed to; but, it ought to be borne in mind, that, through the whole of the discussions, the ground upon which this new call upon the public purse rested, was the Prince's marriage. The debts were not paid off in a ready sum; but, were to be liquidated by certain yearly deductions to come out of an additional yearly allowance to be made to the Prince; and, in case of the death of the King or of the Prince before the debts were all paid, the payment of the remainder was to fall upon the public revenues. So that it amounted to exactly the same thing in effect as if a simple vote had been given for the payment of the debts, at once, out of the year's taxes.

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The King, in his message to the Houses, in about twenty days after the marriage took place, asked for an establishment to be settled upon the Prince "and his august spouse, and, at the same time, told them, that the benefit of any such settlement could not be effectually secured to the Prince, "till he was relieved from his pre"sent encumbrances to a large amount." Upon this ground the Prince's annual allowance from the nation was augmented. It was raised, at once, from £60,000 a year to £125,000 a year; and, of this sum, £25,000 a year were set apart for the discharge of his debts. To this was added a sum of £27,000 for preparations for the marriage; £28,000 for jewels and plate; and £26,000 for finishing Carleton House, the residence of the Prince.

It was necessary to enter into this statement, in order to show you what were the circumstances under which the Prince and Princess came together, and to make you acquainted with the fact, that Her Royal Highness did really bring to her Royal Spouse one of the greatest blessings on earth; namely, a relief from heavy pecuniary encumbrances, which encumbrances would, it is manifest, have continued to weigh upon His Royal Highness had his marriage not taken place.

But, Her Royal Highness also brought

with her other claims to love and gratitude. She was represented at the time, and with truth, I believe, as a person of great beauty, but not greater than her sweetness of manners, her acquired accomplishments, and her strength and greatness of mind. She was received in England with transports of joy; addresses of admiration and gratitude poured in upon her from all quarters, and her husband was congratulated as the happiest of men. A similar torrent of addresses came in upon the birth of the Princess Charlotte of Wales. In short, no events seem ever to have caused such unmixed joy in this country as the marriage of this illustrious Lady and the birth of her child.

tions of a very serious nature are, in the public prints, now stated to have taken place in private, and, at last, the consequence has been the writing and the publication of that Letter of the Princess, which I am now about to make a subject of most respectful consideration and remark.

This, however, I shall defer till my next Number, for reasons, which, when that Number shall appear, will, I imagine, be obvious to all my readers.

WM. COBBETT.

London, 24th Feb. 1813.

Copy of a Letter from Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales, to His Royal ·Highness the Prince Regent :

66 SIR, It is with great reluctance that I presume to obtrude myself upon your Royal Highness, and to solicit your attention to matters which may, at first, appear rather of a personal than a public nature. If I could think them so-if they

What a contrast, alas! is presented in the occurrences of the present day! What short-sighted mortals we are! Who, though the most far-seeing of men, could, in 1796, while addresses of congratulation were succeeding each other to the Prince and Princess upon the birth of their child; who, at that day, could have anticipated, that the time was to come, when the mo-related merely to myself-I should abstain ther would have to complain, aye, and to make public her complaints, of being dobarred a free communication with that

child!

This leads us to a consideration of the Princess's Letter; but, I ought, in the first place, to remind you, that it was not, as was stated at the time in print, many months after the Princess Charlotte was born before her royal Mother had a place of residence separate from that of the Prince. Now, this might happen without ground of blame on either side. There are so many ways in which misunderstandings in families are created; there are so many causes from which the society of man and wife become disagreeable; and these causes may be founded in so many incidents having nothing of crime or blame belonging to them, that, when separations of this sort take place, it is a harsh judgment that will insist upon affixing blame to one party or the other. Therefore, I, for my part, have always been willing to content myself with expressing merely regret upon this subject, in which respect, I am satisfied, that I did no more than follow the example of the great mass of the community. Had things continued in this state; had the parties, though living at a distance from each other, suffered the world to hear nothing from them in the way of complaint against each other, all would yet have been well. Unhappily this has not been the case; accusa

from a proceeding which might ginn un casiness, or interrupt the more weighty occupations of your Royal Highness's time. I should continue, in silence and retirement, to lead the life which has been prescribed to me, and console myself for the loss of that society and those domestic comforts to which I have so long been a stranger, by the reflection that it has been deemed proper I should be afflicted without any fault of my own-and that your Royal Highness knows it.

"But, Sir, there are considerations of a higher nature than any regard to my own happiness, which render this address a duty both to Myself and my Daughter. May I venture to say-a duty also to my Husband, and the people committed to his care? There is a point beyond which a guiltless woman cannot with safety carry her forbearance. If her honour is invaded, the defence of her reputation is no longer a matter of choice; and it signifies not whether the attack be made openly, manfully, and directly-or by secret insinuation, and by holding such conduct towards her as countenances all the suspicions that malice can suggest. If these ought to be the feelings of every woman in England who is conscious that she deserves no reproach, your Royal Highness has too sound a judgment, and too nice a sense of honour, not to perceive, how much more justly they belong to the Mother of your Daughter

-the Mother of her who is destined, I trust, at a very distant period, to reign over the British Empire.

dence of my innocence, and disregard the sentence of complete acquittal which it produced, or is wicked and false enough still to whisper suspicions in your ear,-betrays his duty to you, Sir, to your Daughter, and to your People, if he counsels you to permit a day to pass without a further investigation of my conduct. I know that no such calumniator will venture to recommend a measure which must speedily end in his utter confusion. Then let me implore you to reflect on the situation in which I am placed; without the shadow of a charge against me-without even an accuser-after an Inquiry that led to my ample vindication-yet treated as if I were still more culpable than the perjuries of my suborned traducers represented me, and

"It may be known to your Royal Highness, that during the continuance of the restrictions upon your royal authority, I purposely refrained from making any representations which might then augment the painful difficulties of your exalted station. At the expiration of the restrictions I still was inclined to delay taking this step, in the hope that I might owe the redress I sought to your gracious and unsolicited condescension. I have waited, in the fond indulgence of this expectation, until, to my inexpressible mortification, I find that my unwillingness to complain, has only produced fresh grounds of complaint; and I am at length compelled, either to aban-held up to the world as a Mother who may don all regard for the two dearest objects not enjoy the society of her only Child. which I possess on earth,-mine own honour, and my beloved Child; or to throw myself at the feet of your Royal Highness, the natural protector of both.

"I presume, Sir, to represent to your Royal Highness. that the separation, which every succeeding month is making wider, of the Mother and the Daughter, is equally injurious to my character, and to her education. I say nothing of the deep wounds which so cruel an arrangement inflicts upon my feelings, although I would fain hope that few persons will be found of a disposition to think lightly of these. To see myself cut off from one of the very few domestic enjoyments left me-certainly the only one upon which I set any value, the society of my Child-involves me in such misery, as I well know your Royal Highness could never inflict upon me, if you were aware of its bitterness. Our intercourse has been gradually diminished. A single interview weekly seemed sufficiently hard allowance for a Mother's affections. That, however, was reduced to our meeting once a fortnight; and I now learn, that even this most rigorous interdiction is to be still more rigidly enforced.

"But while I do not venture to intrude my feelings as a Mother upon your Royal Highness's notice, I must be allowed to say, that in the eyes of an observing and jealous world, this separation of a Daughter from her Mother will only admit of one construction, a construction fatal to the Mother's reputation. Your Royal Highness will also pardon me for adding, that there is no less inconsistency than injustice in this treatment. He who dares advise your Royal Highness to overlook the evi

"The feelings, Sir, which are natural to my unexampled situation, might justify me in the gracious judgment of your Royal Highness, had I no other motives for addressing you but such as relate to myself: but I will not disguise from your Royal Highnese what I cannot for a moment conceal from myself,-that the serious, and it soon may be, the irreparable injury which my Daughter sustains from the plan at present pursued, has done more in overcoming my reluctance to intrude upon your Royal Highness, than any sufferings of my own could accomplish: and if, for her sake, I presume to call away your Royal Highness's attention from the other cares of your exalted station, I feel confident I am not claiming it for a matte of inferior importance either to yourself or your people.

"The powers with which the Constitution of these realms vests your Royal Highness in the regulation of the Royal Family, I know, because I am so advised, are ample and unquestionable. My appeal, Sir, is made to your excellent sense and liberality of mind in the exercise of those powers; and I willingly hope, that your own parental feelings will lead you to excuse the anxiety of mine, for impelling me to represent the unhappy consequences, which the present system must entail upon our beloved Child.

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"Is it possible, Sir, that any one can have attempted to persuade your Royal Highness, that her character will not be injured by the perpetual violence offered to her strongest affections-the studied care taken to estrange her from my society, and even to interrupt all communication between us? That her love for me, with

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