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deprecate, "all false doctrine, heresy, and schism; hardness of heart, and contempt of God's Word and Commandment;" and odious display of" pride, vain-glory, and hypocrisy; of hatred, malice, and uncharitableness;" all aggravated by the very loudest pretensions to integrity, and purity, and brotherly love? Is it not then a disgrace to us, that such a publication can be circulated at all? Should it not be execrated by every friend of his Church, his government, his country, and his religion? Ought not so vile a production to be every where "shunned as infectious, and hunted down as destructive?”

Not doubting but that you will continue to merit the warm thanks of your country by a vigilant attention to such diabolical writers,

I am, Sir, with due respect,
Your's,

DETECTOR.

POLITICS.

THE public mind has been so completely engrossed by the important inquiry into the conduct of the commander-in-chief in the disposal of commissions, as to allow no other object to occupy any portion of its attention for the last two months. The main question has been decided by a vote of the House of Commons, who have resolved, that the evidence adduced before them afforded no grounds for charging the Duke of York with corruption, or with connivance at the infamous transactions which that evidence disclosed. This resolution was carried by a majority of eighty-two, 278 members having voted in favour of it, and 195 against it. To the decision of a majority of the House of Commons, however small, we shall always pay that degree of respect which is due to the solemn determination of one of the great councils of the state. But as we are in full possession of the grounds of that decision, of the motives which influenced the leading members in the vote which they gave, and on the evidence on which alone such yote ought to be founded, it will be no presumption in us to hold and to declare a different opinion from that which the majority have proclaimed, particularly when supported by no less than 196 members of the House, among whom are men of minds as independent, and as firmly attached to the principles which brought the present ministry into power, as ourselves; and as cordially disposed to support the great measures of ministerial policy.

which they have proposed and enforced. As we conceive that the public have a right, on such questions as this, to call for the decided opinion of every public character, and of every public writer, we shall frankly declare, that, after a most attentive perusal of the evidence taken at the bar of the House, and of all the documents by which it was accompanied, as printed by authority, and of the comments and expositions of different members in the course of the debate, had we been called upon for our opinion, we should have pronounced it to be the full deliberate conviction of our mind, that the commander-in-chief was guilty of connivance at the corrupt practices carried on by his mistress. And though we should not have been so presumptuous as to. question the purity of their motives, or the sincerity of their declarations, who had drawn a different deduction from the sanie premises, yet we cannot conceive from what known principle of human action it is possible to infer his royal highness's ignorance of transactions which were so peculiarly calculated to alarm his jealousy and to raise his suspicions. That he was deeply enamoured of Mrs. Clarke, after reading his letters, it is impossible to doubt for a moment. Who then can believe, that her applications to him in behalf of different persons, some of them young men, would not lead to an immediate inquiry into the motives of his beloved mistress's interposition in their favour, into the source of the dear interest which she took in their concerns? No doubt this seems, to us at least, to betray an ignorance of human nature so consummate and perverse, as to baffle the efforts of reason, and to set even conjecture at defiance. If an inquiry so natural were made, the answer could be no other than that which Mrs. Clarke has stated in her evidence to have been given. An equivocal answer, it is obvious, would not have satisfied the doating admirer of a " darling love,” “an angel," who was all sensibility, all affection, and who must, therefore, have been exquisitely alive to those impressions which could scarcely fail to be felt by a less ardent lover, and to have sprung from a better regulated passion. But independent of the inference which probability would have led us to draw, the positive testimony of Dowler and Miss Taylor, which there was no counter-evidence to shake, would have carried with them, in our minds, an irresistible conviction of the existence of a culpable connivance at corrupt practices. Having mentioned the name of Miss Taylor, we cannot but express our regret at the unnecessary severity of

Der cross-examination, and the fatal consequences which have resulted from it.' We lay it down as an incontrovertible position, which we defy all the lawyers in the kingdom to overturn, that there exists not in any earthly tribunal the right or the power to compel an answer to a question intended to extort from a young woman a confession that HER MOTHER IS A WHORE AND HERSELF A BASTARD. Such a question appears to us to be immoral, unnatural, and irreligious; because it tends not merely to violate the best feelings of our nature, but to induce the breach of a divine commandment, by leading the witness to revile and to defame her parents, which God has commanded her to honour.-Bat let us not be misunderstood: God forbid that we should impute any thing immoral or irreligious to the gentleman who put the question! We are persuaded that no one of his majesty's subjects is more strongly impressed with the importance of moral and religious principles than himself, nor is there any one whose general conduct is more influenced by these principles, or more in unison with them, than his. Zeal in the defence of what he believed to be the cause of innocence has betrayed him, incon siderately, into a deviation from propriety, which, on reflexion, we have no doubt he will regret.

From one part of Mr. Perceval's speech, we perceive that he has done us the honour to attend to our suggestions and observations on this case: that while we express our satisfaction at the justice which he has done us by such attention, we request him not to harbour, for a moment, the injurious suspicion, that we believed him capable of feeling an indifference to the interests of religion and morality. No; we recollected full well his generous effort to enforce, in a certain clause, obedience to the laws of God, by the terror of human punishment, in his bill for making the crime of adultery a misdemeanour-a bill, the rejection of which inflicted an indelible disgrace on that House of Commons which was guilty of so flagrant a breach of its duty. We are happy, however, that the moral part of the question has at length received from the House the attention which it so eminently deserved. Had it escaped their notice, the effect on the public could not have failed to be most pernicious. If the guardianship of public morals is not so far vested in the legislative body of a state, as to render it au imperative duty to pass a strong censure on any flagrant act of public immorality which may be subjected to their cognisance,

there must be a woeful defect in the constitution which has neglected to provide for a matter so essential to the well-being of the community. Those members who talked with contempt of the impropriety of reading sermons on the profligacy of a prince, would do well to read the History of Modern Europe, and to learn what consequence have been produced by such profligacy, either real or impôted.

In the part which ministers have taken on this question, they seem to us to have been influenced by other considerations than what arose out of the evidence. In their private conferences with the Duke of York, they witnessed no doubt those strong asseverations of innocence which were afterwards communicated to the House, and which probably made an impression on their minds which counteracted the force of the testimony delivered at the bar. With a full conviction of his innocence then (for that they felt such a conviction, it would be the height of injustice to doubt), thus acquired, they cannot, with propriety, be said to have formed their decision on the evidence. And, in that case, they acted neither as judges nor as jurors. Indeed, the resolution passed by the House has not assumed the shape of a judicial decision; we are glad of it, for, as a judicial proceeding, we should have had insuperable objections to urge against it. We are thus constrained to regard it as a political measure: and here we deem it necessary to guard against any false impressions which our former observations respecting thre exercise of judicial power by the House of Commons may have excited. We are fully aware that the House have an unquestionable right to take cognisance of the imputed misconduct of the ministers of the crown; that it is their duty to investigate minutely any such imputation; and, having so done, to excercise their discretion as to the course proper to be pursued against the dẻlinquents. This right they exercised, and this duty they performed, in their inquiry into the conduct of the Duke of York. And as to the ulterior mode of proceeding, we think it was a matter of expediency, whether they should address the King to remove him, or whether they should prefer articles of impeachment before the High Court of Parliament. And their decision, in this point, ought to have been regulated by a consideration of which mode was best calculated to promote the ends of public justice, and was most conducive to the public good. They might

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be of opinion that there was not a sufficiency of legal evidence to bring home the charge of guilt to the party accused so as to justify a verdict of guilty, and, therefore, might deem it an unfit case for an impeachment; yet, at the same time, they might feel that the facts which had come out in evidence were sufficiently strong to bring home a moral conviction of guilt to the mind, and consequently to justify the House in voting an address to the throne beseeching his majesty to remove the commander-in-chief from his office. If they thought that by the latter mode of proceeding the ends of public justice would be better promoted than by the former, it would have been their duty to adopt it. It was by no means necessary for them to pronounce a judicial sentence of guilty or not guilty. They might perceive misconduct which rendered the Duke unfit for his office; but they might consider the imputed guilt as not satisfactorily proved: and, will it be contended, then, that, in such case, they would discharge their duty by passing a sentence of acquittal without any further proceeding? No, it would be their imperative duty, either to pass a resolution expressive of their sense of the transaction, or else directly to address the King for his removal. Viewing the question, then, in this light, we cannot but dissent from the opinions of those who insisted on the necessity of a direct verdict, and who denied the propriety of any other decision than such as would either absolutely condemn or fully acquit. Had it been a judicial proceeding, indeed, this was the only course to pursue; but we cannot consent so to consider it, as it was marked by scarcely any one feature of a judicial investigation.

But, putting all connivance at corrupt practices out of the question, and even taking the case as stated by the warmest advocates of the Duke of York, that his royal highness, though incessantly with his mistress, was totally ignorant of frauds, of a most disgraceful and dangerous tendency, coupled with the name of the commander-in-chief (to use the language of Parliament), in which that mistress acted a principal part, we conceive it impossible to reconcile such ignorance with the attention and vigilance which the Duke was stated by Colonel Gordon to have uniformly displayed in the discharge of his official duties; or to impute it to any other cause than a culpable negligence which rendered him unfit for his office. Again, we contend, that if, in No. 129. Vol. 32. Mar. 1809.

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