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delivery are to our minds satisfactorily disproved, so on the other hand, we think that the circumstances to which we now refer, particularly those stated to have passed between her royal highness and Captain Manby, must be credited until they shall receive some decisive contradiction; and if true are justly entitled to the most serious consideration.

We cannot close this report without humbly assuring your majesty, that it was on every account our anxious wish to have executed this delicate trust with as little publicity as the nature of the case would possibly allow; and we entreat your majesty's permission to express our full persuasion, that if this wish has been disappointed, the failure is not imputable to any-thing unnecessarily said or done by us. All which is most humbly submitted to your majesty. (Signed)

ERSKINE,
SPENCER,

GRENVILLE,

ELLEN BOROUGH.

July 14th, 1806.

67. It does not comport with my plan to enter here into the case of the cruelly-treated princess, who was, during the whole of her married life, dogged by spies, and beset by perjurers and traitors; her case, which forms the great characteristic of the regency and reign of this "mild" and "generous" and "gentleman' king; her case, though as we go along we shall find it force itself upon us here and there, must wait for full display, till we come to the date of her death and burial. In this place it is my business to show how this affair of the princess affected the great and general interests of the

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nation; how it affected the policy of the kingdom, external as well as internal; how clearly it showed that the interests and safety of millions were thought little of in comparison with the indulgence of the passions of one single man.

68. One thing, in this report, will have stricken every reader; namely, that the princess should have the child in her own house four years, and that no complaint should have been made by the prince before now. When we look at the evidence, we find that the originators of the whole story were a Sir JOHN DOUGLAS and HIS WIFE, who had gone to live at Blackheath (near MONTAGUE-HOUSE, the princess's place of residence) in 1801, and who swore positively to the facts of the pregnancy and delivery in 1802. They both swore, also, that they communicated the facts to the prince from a deep... sense of duty, as loyal subjects; the four lords say, in this their report, that it was the bounden duty of the prince to communicate to the king matter "so nearly affecting the honour of the

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royal family, and, by possibility, the succession to the crown; but it does not appear to have occurred to those lords to state why the prince had not made the communication to the king at an earlier period! He might not be informed of the facts before. Strange, indeed! What! a child kept in the house of the princess for four years, nursed as if it were her own; and

the prince, her husband, never hear of it, though only at five miles distance from his own palace, though his wife was surrounded by servants that had been, for the greater part, in his own service! But did those Douglases, those loyal people, those people who swore that they communicated the facts to him from a sense of their duty as loyal subjects, did those people suppress their anxiety about the succession to the crown for four years? Did they hide the facts for four years? and if they did, were they to be believed when they communicated the facts? And how came the FOUR LORDS not to ask (and it does not appear that they did) at what time it was that the Douglases first communicated the facts to the prince? and if the first commonication were in 1806, how came the lords never to ask the Douglases why they did not communicate the facts before the year 1806? And when it became clear that the evidence of the Douglases was false, how came they not to be prosecuted for perjury? And if the tribunal were (as was alleged) not of a nature to bring those, who had sworn falsely before it, under the law for punishing perjury, why did the ministers of that day counsel the king to appoint such a tribunal?

69. Who, then, were the ministers of that day? And here, when we answer this question, we see all the mystery removed; we see why the child lived so quietly for four years; we see why

the Douglases could restrain their feelings of loyalty no longer than the year 1806; we see how it came to burst out all at once at that time; and this leads us to the development of intrigue upon intrigue, of the existence of which, and of the injurious consequences to the country, not one man out of ten thousand has any the most distant idea.

70. The ministers of that day were those who are called the WHIGS. They consisted of a coalition indeed; but this was the name they bore; and the principal offices were filled thus: Lord Grenville, first lord of the treasury; Lord Erskine, lord chancellor: Lord Spencer, secretary of state for the home department; Mr. Fox, secretary of state for the foreign department; Mr. Windham, secretary of state for the department of war and colonies; Mr. Grey (now Earl), first lord of the admiralty; Lord Moira, master general of the ordnance; Lord Fitzwilliam, president of the council; Lord Sidmouth, privy seal; Lord Henry Petty (now Marquis of Lansdown), chancellor of the exchequer; and Ellenborough, the lord chief justice, had a seat in the cabinet. How this ministry came to be in power is a matter which belongs to the history of George III. For our present purpose, it is, as to this matter, sufficient to say, that this ministry had succeeded that of PITT, upon his death, which took place in Janu

ary, 1806. Now, let it be well remembered, that Fox, who, and whose adherents, had now got into power, had always been a sort of political mentor of the prince; that ERSKINE, who now the lord chancellor, had, for many years, been one of his chief companions; and that Lord MOIRA, who was now master general of the ordnance, had been on the footing of a brother with the prince for a great many years, his "personal friend" par excellance.

71. The princess, in her answer to the report of the four lords, distinctly declared that the report, and the whole of the proceeding against her, were the fruit of a "foul conspiracy;" and though there be in the documents no proof of any subornation of the Douglases, it is, at any rate, certain, that their information against the princess was not made known to the king until, as appears by the WARRANT, (paragraph 66,) the month of May, 1806; that is to say, until about a hundred days after the Whigs, the prince's friends, got into power! For four years, while Addington and Pitt were ministers, the child lived very quietly; the Douglases had known of the pregnancy and delivery; they (as they swore) were alarmed for the succession to the throne, and yet the first trace of their communicating the information is, from the documents, found to be in December, 1805. But, at any rate, we find that they had made the com

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