to stand between the Court and its prey, must hurry them into wide-spreading insurrection-how, it will be asked, was it possible that those Ministers-whose hatred of the bill must have been as great as their apprehensions of its consequences were grave, and who had not the shadow of an interest in its fate, except that it should instantly be abandoned-could be brought to sanction a proceeding fraught not only with every mischief to the country, but with the extremest peril to themselves? The great difficulty of answering this question must be confessed; nor is it lessened by the reflection that at the head of the Government in those days there were men whose prudence was more striking than any other quality; men cautious, unpretending, commonplace, and loving place, like Lord Liverpool; wary, cold, circumspect, though of unflinching courage, like Lord Castlereagh; farsighted, delighting in seeing all difficulties that existed, and many that did not, like Lord Eldon; above all, so firm-minded a man as the Duke of Wellington,—a man, too, so honourable in all his feelings, and so likely to influence the councils, if he failed to turn aside the desires, of the Sovereign. The defenders of the Ministers never affected to doubt the mischievous nature of the whole proceeding; they admitted all their opinions to be strongly and decidedly against it; they saw, and confessed that they saw, all the dangers to which it exposed the country; they did not deny that it was the mere personal wish of the King; and that it was the bounden duty, as well as the undoubted interest of his Ministers, peremptorily to refuse their assistance to such a wicked and hopeless project;-admitting, all the while, that as the bill never could be carried through and executed, all the agitation with which so monstrous an attempt was convulsing the country had absolutely not a chance of success, in so far as concerned the King's object. Then, what reason did they assign for the Ministers lending themselves to such an

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enormity? It seems incredible, but it is true, that the only ground ever hinted at was the King's fixed determination, and the risk his Ministers ran of losing their places if they thwarted him in his favourite pursuit! Yes, as if the loss of office was like the loss of life, and they had no power of refusing, because refusal was death, they crouched to that command, rather than yield to which, men of integrity and of firmness would have faced actual death itself. It is certain, that had the Duke of Wellington been longer in civil life, and attained his due weight in the councils of the Government, that weight which this great statesman has since so eminently acquired, he would have taken this and no other view of the question; but it is equally certain that the Ministers at large betrayed the same submissive obedience to their master's will, showed the same dread of facing his displeasure, which unnerves the slaves of the Eastern tyrant when his voice echoes through the vaults of the seraglio, or casts them prostrate before his feet, as the scimitar's edge glances in their eye, and the bowstring twangs on their ear.

The course taken by the leading supporters of the Queen rendered the conduct of the Government still more despicable. It was early announced by Mr. Brougham in the House of Commons that nothing could be more safe than for the Ministers to refuse carrying through the bill, because, if the King after that, should venture to dismiss them on account of their refusal, no man among their adversaries would venture to take office from which the former occupants had been driven for refusing to abandon their duty, and fly in the people's face. The King at once perceived the tendency of this announcement; and he skilfully met it in the only way that could be devised for counteracting that tendency. He gave his Ministers to understand, that if he turned them out for refusing to go on with the bill, he should take their

adversaries into their places without requiring them to adopt or support it. The contrivance was certainly not without ingenuity; but a little reflection must have satisfied even the most timorous place-holder that he had little to fear from so senseless a resolution, and that, as long as the Whigs refused to outbid them for the royal favour in the only stock which had any value at Carlton House, support of the bill, there was no chance whatever of their being taken into office on any other terms. There surely must be something in official life as sweet as natural life is supposed to be, and something peculiarly horrible to statesmen in the bare possibility of political death-else why this pleasing hope, this fond desire, this longing after longevity

or why this dread of dissolution that makes the soul shrink back upon itself? But in one material particular the two kinds of life and death widely differ. The official's death-bed is not cheered by any hopes of immortality. The world to which he now looks forward is another, but not a better world. He knows

full sure that, from the pleasing state of being to which he has been so long used, and so fondly clings, he must instantly, on the great change taking place, be plunged into the dreary night of a placeless existence; be cast away with other mournful ghosts on the tempest-beaten coast of Opposition, there to wander uncertain of ever again being summoned from that inhospitable shore, or visiting the cheerful glimpses of the courtly day. Hence it is, that while men of ordinary powers are daily seen to meet death in the breach for honour or patriotism, hardly any can be found, even among the foremost men of any age, whose nerves are firm enough to look in the face the termination of official existence; and none but one bereft of his senses ever makes himself a voluntary sacrifice for his principles or his country. The Ministers of 1820 numbered not among them any one so void of political reason as to follow Mr. Canning's noble example, and

all were resolved to forego the discharge of every duty, and incur, both then and ever after, the loudest reproaches, rather than put to hazard the existence of the Administration.

The people, we have said, in one voice Demurred to the Bill, and plainly indicated that, if every tittle of the charges against the Queen were proved, or were admitted to be true, they would not suffer her to be sacrificed to the rage of one who had no right whatever to complain of her conduct were it ever so bad. But this feeling did not prevent them from also being prepared, in justice towards her character, to take issue upon the fact; and accordingly the trial before the Lords was looked to with the most universal and painful anxiety, though with a confidence which nothing could shake. After a strenuous but unavailing attempt to arrest the progress of the measure, and fling out the bill on the first reading, her Majesty's counsel, Mr. Brougham her Attorney, and Mr. Denman her Solicitor General, prepared to resist it upon the merits of the case, to meet the evidence of the Milan Commissioners, and to defend their august client from every accusation.* An adjournment of some weeks was allowed the promoters of the measure to prepare their case; the Parliament, instead of the usual prorogation, remained sitting, though the Commons adjourned from time to time; and the 17th of August was fixed for the opening of this extraordinary cause. All that public expectation and anxiety excited to the highest pitch could lend of interest to any trial, was here combined, with the unexampled attendance daily of all the Peers of the empire, the assistance of all the judges of the land, the constant presence of the Commons, a vast concourse of spectators. The Queen several times proceeded to the House in state, accom

* Her other counsel were Mr. Justice Williams, Mr. Serjeant Wilde (now Lord Truro), Mr., afterwards Lord Chief Justice Tindal, and Dr. Lushington.

panied by her suite; and occupied a seat near her counsel, but within the bar. The Nobles best known to the surrounding multitude were greeted on their way to and from Westminster with expressions of popular feeling, friendly or hostile, according as they were known to take part with or against her Majesty; but, on the whole, extraordinary tranquillity prevailed. This was very much owing to the undoubted confidence of a favourable result, which kept possession of the people from the very first; for when the deposition of the chief witness against the Queen had proved very detrimental to her case, and her adversaries were exulting before his cross-examination had destroyed his credit, very alarming indications of irritation and rage were perceived, extending from the people to the troops then forming the garrison of the capital. Nor were there wanting those who judged it fortunate for the peace of the empire and the stability of the throne, that so popular a Prince and so very determined a man as the Duke of Kent was not then living to place himself at the head of the Queen's party, espoused as that was by the military no less than by the civil portion of the community.

After great and memorable displays of eloquence and professional skill on all sides, it was found that the case had failed entirely; and the bill, which for so many months had agitated the whole country, was at length, on the 7th of November, withdrawn. It is said that the advisers of the Queen were dissatisfied with the conduct of that party to which they, generally speaking, belonged, the Whigs-because these might have much more shortly made an end of the case. There were several periods in the proceeding which offered the firmest ground for that great and powerful body to act with decisive effect; espousing as it did the right side of the question, but espousing it feebly, and not very consistently. If at any of those points they had made a strenuous resistance, and refused to