since I was about 12 years old, but the two first lines of which have frequently occurred to me through life: "Envy, eldest born of hell, inconsistencies, into what absurdities, men plunge themselves, when once they are, from whatever cause, induced to quit the straight path!Mr. Waithman, as if not content to differ completely with Mr. "Cease in human breasts to dwell!" Sturch as to the grounds of opposing the I would fain have forborne to express these Address, and as if resolved to deprive his sentiments; but they are extorted from me friends of all possible means of defending by the love of that truth, which was never his consistency upon this memorable occa- yet, under any circumstances, sacrificed or sion, seems to have gone out of his way as disguised to ultimate advantage.- -SIR it were for the deliberate purpose of differ- WM. CURTIS and SIR JAMES SHAW and MR. ing from himself.What the Devil (for ATKINS all allowed, and indeed, most exI must ascribe it to some supernatural plicitly declared, that the Princess was inagency); what the Devil, I say, had he to nocent; and had been most cruelly and do with the proposing of "a Resolution foully treated; but, they said, that this declaratory of the complete acquittal of being notorious to the whole nation, any the Princess of Wales," after he himself proceeding on the part of the Citizens of had objected to the Address; after he him- London was unnecessary; and they, there-' self had declared the Address unnecessary, fore, moved to dissolve the Hall.- -Their because "the whole nation was united in conduct, though I disagree with them in “one sentiment that Her Royal Highness opinion, was perfectly consistent. They "was as innocent as her accusers were thought, that it was a matter with which " guilly!" Could such a proposition the Citizens of London ought not to medhave originated in any thing short of the dle. Therefore, said, let us separate. suggestion of some malicious demon, bent -But, Mr. Waithman, while he thought upon the destruction of this gentleman's the Address unnecessary, because the whole well-earned fame ?—The Address was,nation were agreed as to the innocence of it appears, much too delicate as well as too the Princess, yet proposed a resolution of dignified to entertain even the idea that a his own as being necessary to declare that doubt of her Royal Highness's innocence very innocence! -This was so palpably had ever existed in the minds of those who inconsistent, that it was impossible it were addressing her. It sets out (if the should escape the observation of any one above substance of it be correct), with as-present; there was such a manifest desire suring Her Royal Highness that the senti- to take the thing out of the hands of Mr. ments of the City of London towards her Wood; there was, in short, so evident an have never undergone any change; it then unfairness, to say nothing of the folly, in reprobates those who have conspired against the attempt, that the Livery appear to her; it next expresses admiration of her have resented it in a very decided manner; forbearance and magnanimity; and it con- whereupon, as if to make bad worse, Mr. cludes with expressing a hope that the na- Waithman is reported to have said, that tion will be happy under the young Prin-" he was sorry, that his well-weighed opicess, who will have had the advantage of "nions were in opposition to the general such a mother's example.--This Mr." sentiment so hastily adopted." And how Waithman would, it seems, have turned did Mr. Waithman happen to learn, that into a verdict of acquittal; or, rather, into this general sentiment had been hastily a sort of vulgar congratulation upon an adopted? The persons present had all escape out of a court of justice.- -Ac-had the same time and opportunity that he quittal! The word itself, as applied to had had of forming their opinions upon the Princess, is an insult. When and every thing relative to the case of her Roywhere and by whom and for what was she al Highuess the Princess of Wales; and, ever TRIED? And, if never tried, how as to the simple point, whether his resolu can she be said to have been acquitted?tion was to oust Mr. Wood's Address, there -It is not, however, with the words required little more time to decide upon that I am displeased so much as with the that than is required to decide upon a choice tendency and manifest spirit of the propo-between ugliness and beauty.Besides, sition, the object of which clearly was to mind the convenient doctrine that this reget rid of the Address proposed by Mr. proof implies. The proposer must, of Wood; or, in other words, and to speak course, generally have weighed his propoplainly, to defeat Mr. Wood. I remem-sition before-hand; so that, if his propober a little poem, which I have not read sition does not go down, he can always, with as much propriety and modesty as Mr. Waithman, accuse the assembly of hastily rejecting what he has well weighed. -But, in sober sadness, did Mr. Waithman imagine, that the Livery were to wait in the Hall all day in order to show respect to his well-weighed opinions? Or, did he presume that they were to go home and come again after having, out of respect to him, taken time to consider and to weigh his weighty proposition? There is something so absurd in all this, that, really, one is almost tempted to believe, that the speaker's head was gone at the time when he uttered it.- -I am happy to perceive that I am drawing fast to a close of Mr. Waithman's speech; for it gives me sincere pain to be compelled to notice in it these unaccountable inconsistencies. He hoped, he said, that the Livery would preserve its character for purity and wisdom. -These qualities are of a nature widely different, and should not have been thus joined by what grammarians call the copulative conjunction. The Livery may be pure and wise; but, they might be wise and not pure. Purity may exist without wisdom; and wisdom may exist without purity; at least, this may be the case inthe usual sense of the words, and the sense in which they are here employed; because, if wisdom is to embrace the quality of righteousness, then Mr. Waithman has made use of it superfluously.Taking it for granted, then, that he meant purily as the contrary of corruption, and wisdom as the contrary of folly, I would, if I had been present, certainly have taken the liberty to ask him how he had been able to discover any thing of the nature of corruption to be practised or accomplished through the means of the Address proposed by Mr. Wood; and how it was likely that the Livery should lose its character for purity by agreeing to that Address. And, I would also have taken the liberty to ask Letter of Lord Moira to the head Freehim, whether folly appeared more conspicuous in that Address than in a proposition to declare, in the shape of a resolution, the innocence of the Princess, when, by the rejection of the Address, such a declaration had been previously declared to be wholly unnecessary. -I am truly grieved to observe by the report, in the Courier, that Mr. Waithman said, that he thought the Address, if proposed at all, ought to have been proposed in the Common Counail and not to the Livery at large.- -I say, I am truly grieved to observe this, and I would now fain hope, that it is an interpolation of the Courier's reporter; for it does hold forth such an aristocratic idea; it is so hostile to the well-known rights of the Livery of London; it has its birth in a sentiment so congenial with the practices of corporation encroachments, borough corruptions, and all the means by which popular representation and the people's rights have been undermined and destroyed; it implies so much contempt for the judgment: and virtue of the people, and so much arrogance in one who owes all the little poli-. tical power he has to their voice; and it is, besides, in such direct contradiction to the whole course of the political life of Mr. Waithman, who has called, I believe, more Common Halls than any other man now alive, and who has repeatedly been the cause of putting upon record declarations of Common Halls, that the Livery. ought to be received by the King upon the Throne as well as the Common Council, that I really am filled with astonishment that he should have said any thing liable to such an interpretation; and I must say, that I shall not be able to bring myself to believe it, until I have better authority than that which any news-paper can give. -I have now gone through all the material parts of this debate. To be obliged to make remarks such as I have made upon the speeches of Messrs. STURCH and WAITHMAN is by no means pleasant; but, what I have said the case imperiously called for, and I am satisfied that I have done no inore than what strict duty demanded at my hands. WM. COBBETT. Bolley, 7th April, 1813. LETTERS OF LORD MOIRA AND MR. WHIT- mason. CORRESPONDENCE OF LORD MOIRA AND MR. WHITBREAD. March 23, 1813. My dear Sir, The difficulty of taking down, with accuracy, in the House of Lords, what is said by any individual, as the reporters are not allowed to make notes, has occasioned the account of what passed there yesterday to be incorrect in many of the papers. I am thence anxious to detail to you the substance of the explanation given by me, that you may communicate it to our Brethren of the Lodge, whom I had requested to suspend their opinions on the subject till I might feel at liberty to enter upon it. I thought it expedient to separate the matter into distinct heads, that each of the misrepresentations I had to combat may be answered the more precisely.. I never happened to be at Belvidere, or in its vicinity, in the whole course of my life. It follows that I could not have sought there any information respecting the Princess's conduct. But the negative does not only apply to that place. In no one instance have I ever spontaneously endeavoured to obtain particulars respecting Her Royal Highness's behaviour; and I should certainly have declined such a function had the Prince requested it of me, which I am persuaded never entered the most distantly into his contemplation. It is not in his nature to prompt so vile a practice. When any matter has been referred to me, or any communication has been made to me in an authentic and formal nauner, my oath, as one of the Prince's Council, bound me to such examination of the point as I might think the honour and interest of His Royal Highness required. visers. " all in the neighbourhood, and that it was entirely unnecessary for his Royal Highness to notice it in any shape. The servants had been desired by me never to talk upon the subject; Lord Eardley was informed that his conception of what had been stated by the servants was found to be inaccurate; no mention was ever made by any one, not even to the Lords who conducted the inquiry, three years afterwards, of the particulars related by the servants, and the circumstance never would have been known at all had not the legal advisers of the Princess, for the sake of putting a false colour on that Investigation, indiscreetly brought it forward. The death of Kenny, in the interval, tempted them to risk this procedure. Jonathan Partridge having been known at the time when he was questioned to be devoted to the Princess, from his own declaration to the steward, no one can doubt but that Her Royal Highness would the next day be informed by him of his having been examined. The measure was most offensive, if not justified, by some uncommon peculiarity of circumstance. Yet absolute silence is preserved upon it for so long a period by Her Royal Highness's advisers; a forbearance only to be solved by their being too cautious to touch upon the point while Kenney was alive.-3. The interviews with Dr. Mills and Mr. Edmeades did not take place till between three and four years after the examination of Lord Eardley's servants, and had no reference to it.Fanny Lloyd, a maid servant in the Princess's family, had, in an examination to which I was not privy, asserted Dr. Mills to have men tioned to her that the Princess was pregnant; a deposition which obviously made it necessary that Dr. Mills should be subjected to examination. This happened to be discussed before me; and it was my sugges tion that it would be more delicate to let me -2. Two of Lord Eardley's servants were examined by me in London, in a spirit very different from what was slanderously imputed by the Princess's legal adLord Eardley had given to the Prince an account, absolutely uninvited, and no less unwelcome, of meetings between the Princess and Captain Manby at Belvidere, which his Lordship had represented (from the report of his servants) as having caused great scandal in the neighbourhood; his Lordship had asked an audience of the Prince, who had no suspicion of his object, for the purpose of stating the fact, and exonerating himself from any sup. position of connivance. When the Prince did me the honour of relating to me this re-request the attendance of Dr. Mills at my presentation of Lord Eardley's, expressing great uneasiness that the asserted notoriety of the interviews at Belvidere,and the comments of the neighbours, should force him to take any public steps, I suggested the possibility that there might be misap prehension of the circumstances; and I entreated that, before any other procedure should be determined upon, I might send for the steward (Kenny) and the porter Jonathan Partridge) to examine them. This was permitted. I sent for the servants and questioned them. My report to the Prince was, that the matter had occasioned very little observation in the house, none at house, and to have him meet the magis trate there, than that publicity and observation should be entailed by his being sume inoned to the Office in Marlborough-street. Dr. Mills came early, and then it was im mediately discovered that it was his partner, Mr. Edmeades, who had bled Fanny Lloyd, though the latter (knowing the Priucess's apothecary to be Dr. Mills, and imagining it was that apothecary who had bled her) had confounded the names. Dr. Mills was therefore dismissed, without being examined by the Magistrate; and he was begged to send Mr. Edineades on another morn ing. Mr. Edmeades came accordingly, and was examined before the Magistrate. An attempt is made to pervert an observation of mine into an endeavour to make Mr. Edmeades alter his testimony, injuriously for the Princess. So far from there being any thing of conciliation in my tone, Mr. Conant must well remember my remark to have been made as a correction of what I deemed a premeditated and improper pertness of manner in Mr. Edmeades. It was an unmitigated profession of my belief that he was using some subterfuge to justify his denial; a declaration little calculated to win him to pliancy, had I been desirous of influencing his testimony. My conviction on the point remains unchanged. One or other of the parties was wilfully incorrect in their statement; if Fanny Lloyd were so, it was downright perjury; Mr. Edmeades might have answered only elusively.. I have been told that some individual, pointing at the direct opposition between the affidavits of Mr. Edmeades and Fanny Lloyd has indicated the preferable credit which ought to be given to the oath of a well-educated man, in a liberal walk of life, over that of a person in the humble station of a maid servant. I shall not discuss the justice of the principle which arbitrarily assumes deficiency of moral rectitude to be the natural inference from humility of condition. The inculcation in the present instance would have been somewhat more rational, had it advised that, in a case of such absolute contradiction upon a simple fact, the comprehension of which could have nothing to do with education, you should consider on which side an obvious temptation to laxity appears. Fauny Lloyd was not merely a reluctant witness, but had expressed the greatest indignation at being subject to examination. When she swore positively to a circumstance admitting of no latitude, the only thing to be weighed was, what probability of inducement existed for her swearing that which she knew to be false.. It will appear that her testimony on that point was not consonant to the partiality which she had proclaimed; that by the other parts of her evidence she was barring the way to reward, if any profligate hopes of remuneration led her to risk the falsehood; and that she could not be influenced by malice against Mr. Edmeades, with whom it was clear she was unacquainted. Nothing, therefore, presented itself, to throw an honest doubt upon her veracity. Mr. Edmeades was very differently circumstanced. A character for dangerous chattering was absolute ruin to him in his profession. He had the strongest of all motives to exonerate himself from the charge, if he could hit upon any equivocation by which he might satisfy himself in the denial of it. And the bearing of my remark must not be misunderstood. No man would infer any thing against the Princess on the ground of such a random guess as that of Mr. Edmeades* must have been, unless Mr. Edmeades should support his proposition by the adduction of valid reasons and convincing circumstances; but there was a consequence ascribable to it in its loosest state. His hav ing been sufficiently indiscreet to mention his speculation to others as well as to Fanny Lloyd, would well account for what was otherwise incomprehensible; namely, the notion of the Princess's pregnancy so generally entertained at Greenwich, and in that neighbourhood. It was my conviction that such indiscretion had taken place, not any belief of the fact to which it related that I endeavoured to convey by remark.4. This construction is not put upon the circumstances now, for the first time. A paper of mine, submitted to His Majesty at the period of the investigation, and lodged with the other documents relative to that inquiry, rebuts in the same terms the base attempt of insinuating conspiracy against the Princess.-Why that paper has not seen the light with the other documents may be surmised. I had thought it incumbent on me, from the nature of the transaction, not to furnish any means for its publication from the copy in my possession. The present explanation unavoidably states all the material points contained in it. But it will be felt by every one that the detail has been extorted from me. -5. The Editor of a Sunday publication has asserted his having been told, by a person known to him, that I had commissioned that person to insert in an Evening Paper anonymous paragraphs, injurious to the Princess. The procedure is so little consistent with any custom of mine, that, to the best of my recollection and belief, I never sent an unauthenticated article, of any form or tenor, to a newspaper, but once in my life. That was upon an erroneous statement, affecting myself alone, which I pointed out to a Gentleman who happened to call upon me, expressing my wish that he would contradict it. A matter so trivial would not have been mentioned by me, did it not shew that, even in cases which might be considered indifferent, I had habitual objection to sending any thing for insertion in a newspaper; therefore I could not have slidden inconsiderately ness. into the turpitude with which I am now jeet, any expression of mine is equivocal; charged. But if upon insertions that might but if there be room for a double construcbe uninteresting to others I speak only as to tion, even from a want of advertence: in memory, it is not the same with regard to persons to the context, I must think myanonymous attacks on the character of an- self fortunate in an opportunity of renderother. On that I make no reservations; Iing the points distinct.- -Your remarks deny with the most solemn appeal to the attach upon two passages: that which reSupreme Being, the having ever levelled presents Jonathan Partridge as devoted to such a shaft against the feelings of any indi- the Princess of Wales; and that which survidual whatever. I know not the seduc-mises the existence of Kenney to have been tion on earth that. could reconcile me to what a check on the advisers of Her Royal HighI consider as equally mean and atrocious. The word devoted presented itself No excuse of wit, no plea of public good, to me from recollection that it was Kencould palliate to me the baseness of wound- ney's phrase; but I certainly used it in no ing another covertly. If I feel this gene- other sense than that which it was intendrally, I must do so in a peculiar degree to-ed to bear by him. If it be supposed cawards the exalted Personage in contempla-pable of implying that Jonathan Partridge tion, whose sex, whose station, and whose was in the pay of the Princess, or so concircumstances, would make such detraction execrable beyond what words can express. I know not any person who would pass that sentence on the act more decidedly or more indignantly than the Illustrious Individual whose favour might be supposed to be sought by the dirty procedure. These were the points which I advanced to the House of Lords; I there vouched them, on the faith of a Gentleman, and I repeat to you that assertion of their accuracy. I have the honour to be, my dear Sir, (Signed) MOIRA. Lord Moira to Mr. Whitbread. April 2, 1813. nected as to be the instrument in any plans, Dear Sir, The first report of what had passed in the House of Commons, made me conceive that your procedure had been hos-fine the second passage; yet I must say, tile; and the matter was the more inexplicable to me, from my thinking that your access to documents, as well as the conversations you had held with me, ought to have secured me from any misapprehension on the points agitated. From that impression I found myself strangely embarrassed about an explanation which I was at the same time highly solicitous to give. I felt invincible repugnance to answering you in an Assembly where you could not reply; and direct address to yourself was precluded by what I had understood as the tone taken by you. The correct statement of your speech in The Morning Chronicle, which I must consider as the true version, has done away all difficulty; and I am truly indebted to you for having now the means of correcting an ambiguity, if any thing of the sort be supposed to exist in my statement. I cannot say, that in my view of the sub I do not comprehend how any man who reflected for a moment could understand that passage as pointing at the Princess. What consequence to Her Royal Highness could attend the bringing forward the discussion while Kenney was alive, when the whole matter (as related to her) was dismissed in 1803, when Kenney was forthcoming? Partridge, in his deposition, states himself to have told me of the Prin cess having visited Belvidere House with three ladies and a gentleman. This representation is correct. He did state this to have taken place on a Sunday. But he sinks the fact of his having mentioned at the same time that the Princess had also been there with only Mrs. Fitzgerald and Captain Manby on the Thursday preceding that Sunday. This was the visit which had been particularly pointed out to Lord Eardley, and which had occasioned his |