its object, and return upon those who gave it. My lords, from the horrors of this catastrophe save the country-save yourselves.

The trial was now concluded. On the 6th of November the division on the second reading was taken-in other words, the Peers were called upon to pronounce their judgment as to the guilt or innocence of the Queen. A hundred and nine voted her guilty, eighty-one indicated by their votes their belief in her innocence. On the 10th, a division was taken on the third reading of the bill. The majority had dwindled from twenty-eight to nine, and the Government at once abandoned the bill.

All through the trial, the most intense excitement had prevailed. Public addresses, breathing the greatest affection for the Queen's person, and detestation of her opponents, poured in from all quarters, and the streets of the metropolis were daily crowded with cavalcades proceeding to Brandenburgh House, Hammersmith-Her Majesty's residence. Day by day, as she went to occupy her place at the bar by the side of her counsel, "the streets were thronged, balconies and house-tops swarming; multitudinous voices invoked, 'God bless your Majesty,' urged the hesitating soldiers to do honour to their Queen, and hooted or cheered the leading partisans." The whole country breathed a full sigh of relief when the Queen was virtually declared guiltless.

It would divert us from the direct purpose of these pages to narrate the subsequent incidents of the Queen's embittered life-her worshipping in St. Paul's, to express her gratitude for deliverance from a great peril; her rejection of an annuity from the Crown; the handsome provision made for her by the House of Commons; the addresses of congratulation presented from all parts of

the country on her virtual acquittal; the ill-success of her unwise attempt to be present at her husband's coronation; the persistency in the malicious purpose of omitting her name from the Liturgy; her sickening and death, and the riotous accompaniments of her funeral.

It happened that a printer at Durham, Ambrose Williams, published in the newspaper for whose contents he was legally responsible, certain animadversions on the refusal of the clerical authorities of the city to allow the bells to be tolled on the occasion of the Queen's death. He was tried for libel, and the verdict went against him Mr. Brougham was his counsel, and he made what he considered the most successful of all his forensic speeches. Its invective was truly Demosthenic in intensity and galling force, and we think it well worthy of being copiously extracted from.

The clergy of the diocese of Durham stand in a peculiarly unfortunate situation; they are, in truth, the most injured of men. They all, it seems, entertained the same generous sentiments with the rest of their countrymen, though they did not express them in the old free English manner, by openly condemning the proceedings against the late Queen; and after the course of unexampled injustice against which she victoriously struggled had been followed by the needless infliction of inhuman torture, to undermine a frame whose spirit no open hostility could daunt, and extinguish the life so long embittered by the same foul arts-after that great princess had ceased to harass her enemies (if I may be allowed thus to speak, applying, as they did, by the perversion of all language, those names to the victim which belong to the tormentor)—after her glorious but unhappy life had closed, and that princely head was at last laid low by death, which living, all oppression had only the more illustriously exalted—the venerable the clergy of Durham, I am now told for the first time, though less formal in giving vent to their feelings than the rest of their fellow-citizens-though not so vehement in their indignation at the matchless and unmanly persecution of the Queen-though not so

unbridled in their joy at her immortal triumph, nor so loud in their lamentation over her mournful and untimely end-did, nevertheless, in reality, all the while deeply sympathise with her sufferings, in the bottom of their reverend hearts! When all the resources of the most inglorious cruelty hurried her to a fate without parallel—if not so clamorous, they did not feel the least of all the members of the community. Their grief was, in truth, too deep for utterance-sorrow clung round their bosoms, weighed upon their tongues, stifled every sound, and when all the rest of mankind, of all sects and of all nations, freely gave vent to the feelings of our common nature, their silence, the contrast which they displayed to the rest of their species, proceeded from the greater depth of their affliction; they said the less because they felt the more! Oh! talk of hypocrisy after this! Most consummate of all the hypocrites! After instructing your chosen official advocate to stand forward with such a defence—such an exposition of your motives-to dare utter the word hypocrisy, and complain of those who charged you with it! This is indeed to insult common sense, and outrage the feelings of the whole human race! If you were hypocrites before, you were downright frank honest hypocrites to what you have now made yourselves-and, surely, for all you have ever done, or even been charged with, your worst enemies must be satiated with the humiliation of this day, its just atonement and ample retribution !

If

Judging beforehand, no doubt, any one must have expected the Durham clergy, of all men, to feel exactly as they are now, for the first time, ascertained to have felt. They are Christians; outwardly, at least, they profess the gospel of charity and peace. They beheld oppression in its foulest shape; malignity and all uncharitableness putting on their most hideous forms; measures passed to gratify prejudices in a particular quarter, in defiance of the wishes of the people, and the declared opinions of the soundest judges of each party; and all with the certain tendency to plunge the nation in civil discord. for a moment they had been led away, by a dislike of cruelty and of civil war, to express displeasure at such perilous doings, no man would have charged them with political meddling; and when they beheld truth and innocence triumph over power, they might, as Christian ministers, calling to mind the original of their own church, have indulged, without offence, in some little appearance of gladness; a calm, placid satisfaction, in so happy an event, would not have been unbecoming their sacred station. When they found that her sufferings

were to have no end, that new pains were inflicted in revenge for her escape from destruction, and new tortures devised to exhaust the vital power of her whom open lawless violence had failed to subdue-we might have expected some slight manifestation of disapproval from holy men, who, professing to inculcate loving-kindness, tender mercy, and good-will to all, offer up their daily prayers for those who are desolate and oppressed. When at last the scene closed, and there was an end of that persecution which death alone could stay-but when not even her unhappy fate could glut the revenge of her enemies-and they who had harassed her to death now exhausted their malice in reviling the memory of their victim: if among them had been found, during her life, some miscreant under the garb of a priest, who, to pay his court to power, had joined in trampling upon the defenceless-even such a one, had he the form of man, with a man's heart throbbing in his bosom, might have felt even his fawning, sordid, calculating malignity assuaged by the hand of death; even he might have left the tomb to close upon the sufferings of his victim. All probability certainly favoured the supposition that the clergy of Durham would not take part against the injured, because the oppressor was powerful; and that the prospect of emolument would not make them witness with dry eyes and hardened hearts the close of a life which they had contributed to embitter and destroy. But I am compelled to say that their whole conduct has falsified those expectations. They sided openly, strenuously, officiously, with power, in the oppression of a woman whose wrongs this day they, for the first time, pretend to bewail in their attempt to cozen you out of a verdict, behind which they may skulk from the inquiring eyes of the people. Silent and subdued in their tone as they were on the demise of the unhappy queen, they could make every bell in all the chimes peal when gain was to be expected by flattering present greatness. Then they could send up addresses, flock to public meetings, and fill the press with their libels, and make the pulpit ring with their sycophancy, filling up to the brim the measure of their adulation to the reigning monarch, Head of the Church, and dispenser of its patronage.

FOREIGN POLICY

CHAPTER VIII.

- -BROUGHAM'S SUPPORT OF CANNING.

A.D. 1820-1827.

Political Effects of the Queen's Trial-Brougham's Position in Parliament and with the People-Character of Canning-Disruption of the Holy Alliance-Continental Affairs-The Congress of Vienna-Change in English Foreign Policy-Brougham Defends it-The Revolutions in Spain and Portugal-Brougham's Defence of Non-intervention-Canning offers to make Brougham a Judge "The Schoolmaster Abroad.”

AFTER the result of the trial of Queen Caroline, Lord Erskine thus wrote, and his words expressed the sentiments of every thoughtful mind in the nation :

My life, whether it has been for good or for evil, has been passed under the sacred rule of the law. In this moment I feel my strength renovated by that rule being restored. The acccursed change wherewithal we had been menaced has passed over our heads. There is an end of that horrid and portentous excrescence of a new law, retrospective, iniquitous, and oppressive; and the constitution and scheme of our polity is once more safe. My heart is too full of the escape we have just had to let me do more than praise the blessings of the system we have regained.

To what extent the efforts of Mr. Brougham operated to induce the Ministry to withdraw their accusation, it is impossible to say. The waning of their majority in the Peers must be attributed to various causes. If there were some nobles and prelates who voted the Queen guilty because they wished to propitiate their royal