a single instance, he suffered a military promotion to take place, to be expedited, delayed, or in any way affected, by the interposition of his mistress, that circumstance alone would be sufficient to require his dismission. We think, therefore, the Duke has, at last, acted judiciously in resigning his place. And, we trust, though now filled by a very worthy officer, that the office of commander-in-chief will never again be occupied by an individual. It is an office to which too much patronage is attached for an individual to enjoy, and there can be no reason to prevent the establishment of an Army Board, on the same plan and principle as the Board of Admiralty. Nor is it even necessary that a military man should be at the head of such a board, any more than it is that a naval officer should preside at the Admiralty. But, above all, we hope never to see a member of the royal family again placed in a situation of responsibility. We shall not be suspected of entertaining any undue prejudices against the family of a prince whom we love as a man, and revere as a monarch; but it is impossible not to have perceived, even from Mr. Canning's speech, the extreme delicacy and difficulty of calling the King's son to account for his conduct. These considerations, which were pressed by Mr. Canning (though in such an investigation they ought not to have the smallest influence), could not fail to carry with them very great weight, and to make a very strong impression. The force of this argument, we are persuaded, will be felt, though its justice may not be acknowledged.

Respecting the conditional annuity granted by the Duke of York to his discarded mistress, the chancellor of the Exchequer acknowledged that there was an awkwardness about it, which he could have wished had been avoided; he admitted that it would have been better that the annuity had been absolute than conditional; but from the Duke's refusal to pay it, he inferred a consciousness of innocence. Now, the demand of Mrs. Clarke, for the payment of her annuity, was either just or unjust; and as no attempt has been made to prove it unjust, we must conclude it to have been just; for had it been possible to impeach its justice, we may be sure, from the uncommon pains which have been taken to give a black colouring to every one of her actions, it would have been done. Was it fair, was it honourable, was it just, then, to refuse the payment of it? And the refusal, be it observed, appears to have been given before

her threats, which have been alleged

We

justification of it, were uttered. But, it has been asked, if the Duke was conscious of guilt, would he, for the sake of the paltry sum of 4001. a year, have néglected to secure the silence of one so able to inculpate him? might answer this question by asking another-Could the Duke be so weak as to suppose that so paltry a sum as 4001. per year could induce such a woman as Mrs. Clarke, with whom he had long lived in a state of splendid luxury and boundless dissipation, to lead a correct, decorous, and retired life? But we are aware that interrogation is not argument; and we will candidly admit that there is much force in Mr. Perceval's objection to our inference, from the nature of this transaction. And had not his royal highness displayed so much weakness in other parts of his disgraceful intercourse with this woman, we should be disposed to yield to its cogency; but we certainly did believe that the annuity had been rendered conditional for the express purpose of securing Mrs. Clarke's silence; and notwithstanding what has been said, that impression is not yet removed from our minds. Indeed Mr. Perceval has, by implication, admitted the impression to be the natural consequence of the conditional grant, as on no other ground, that we can imagine, could he have declared his opinion that it would have been preferable to make that grant absolute.

By what operation of the human mind any man could bring himself to consider the evidence of Dowler and Miss Taylor as inadmissible and incredible, it is impossible for us to conceive. Most conscientiously do we declare our entire belief of the perfect veracity of both those witnesses; nor can we imagine that any thing but a preconceived conviction of the total innocence of the Duke, could have led any man of sense and integrity to harbour a doubt of their truth. That a mind so prepossessed might rather admit the falsehood of the evidence than the guilt of the accused, is conceivable; but it is not conceivable that any man, who allowed the conversation which Miss Taylor stated to have passed, in her presence, between the Duke and his mistress, to have actually passed, could bring himself to believe that that conversation "could not with justice be interpreted into any proof that his royal highness had a criminal knowledge of the transaction to which it related." We, on the contrary, insist, that if that conversation really passed, it could not, by possibility, bear any other interpretation. And yet has this belief been expressed by a lawyer, who did not hesitate farther to

assert, that there was not a tittle of evidence to support the charge of connivance at corrupt practices; and that the Duke had no knowledge of any of the transactions in which his mistress had been engaged. And thus far, after his note respecting Tonyn's case (the authority of which was proved by as strong evidence as was ever brought to prove a similar case), after his conversation in the presence of Miss Taylor, and after his letter on General Clavering's business!! If any lawyer had ventured to make such assertions in court of justice, he would have experienced such a reproof from the judge, as would have effectually prevented their repetition. This same lawyer, too, ventured to affirm, that "the British army had never distinguished itself more than at those periods, when the chief command of it was vested in a prince of the blood." This is a piece of historical information that is perfectly new to us. We are rather astonished that no member should have been tempted to ask the learned gentleman, whether the Duke of Marlborough, the Earl of Peterborough, General Wolfe, Sir Ralph Abercrombie, or Sir John Stuart, were princes of the blood? and, also, who signed the Convention of Closter-Severn, who commanded at the siege of Dunkirk, and who concluded the Convention in Holland? It is not by such gross and fulsome adulation that the cause of royalty is to be served.

Another incredulous lawyer is stated to have said, that he did not believe that his royal highness knew that the Samuel Carter promoted by him, and recommended by Lieutenant Sutton, was the same person whom he had seen behind Mrs. Clarke's chair, or her carriage. The plain fact was this;-that, more than three years before, this youth had been recommended by Lieutenant Sutton; but the recommendation had been totally disregarded. When, however, he became servant to the Duke of York's mistress, her interposition in his favour was more effectual, and he was appointed to an ensigncy. Mrs. Clarke, it should be observed, was, in this case,

very unwilling evidence. It was not brought forward by her, but against her wish and desire. There cannot, then, be the least ground for suspecting the truth and accuracy of her testimony on the subject. She states positively that the Duke of York did know that Carter was her footman; and yet a lawyer rises in the House of Commons, and without the smallest probability to support him, contradicts her evidence, and states his disbelief of the fact!!!

We find ourselves obliged to notice an extraordinary position

advanced by a fourth lawyer; one, certainly, who is not less eminent for his knowledge and talents as a barrister, than for the soundness of his principles as a politician. This respectable and learned member is reported to have uttered the following sentence: " If the Duke of York had not A HIGH SENSE OF THE VALUE OF HONOUR AND CHARACTER, he would not have parted with Mrs. Clarke when he found her character would not bear investigation; and it was not natural to suppose that a man, who at one time had so high a sense of the value of character in ▲ WOMAN LIVING UNDER HIS PROTEction, should at another time think so slightly of character us to run the risk of exposure, if he had not been conscious of his innocence." We recollect that some of the young members of the States General in France were accustomed to attend what were called the Evening Sittings; when, heated with wine, they frequently made motions and uttered speeches at night, of which they were heartily ashamed when they came to their sober senses in the morning. It was at one of these sittings, called the Night of the Dupes, that the foundation was laid for the subversion of all property, and for the destruction of all the boundaries between right and wrong, virtue and vice. Now, if we had not known the state of sobriety of the learned member to whom the above speech has been imputed, we should certainly have been induced to ascribe it to some preternatural stimulus, of a nature similar to that which produced such an effect on the senatorial orators of revolutionary France. Certain, however, it is, that no kuman being could suppose that this strange declamatory nonsense, about honour and character, could refer to an adulterous connexion between the Duke and his mistress! Away with this parliamentary cant, which substitutes a courteous and delusive phraseology for the plain, wholesome language of the country; a man dismissing his strumpet, because, forsooth, her character could not bear investigation! In the name of common sense and of outraged decency,' what character can a man require or expect with a woman whom he solicits to live with him in a state of double adultery, or, in modern parliamentary language, to live under his protection! This mode of softening down the appropriate epithets by which our honest forefathers expressed their sense of vice and vicious practices, has a tendency most injurious to the morals of the country, by accustoming our females coolly to contemplate scenes from which, if clothed in their proper colours, they would revolt with horror. Already, in the course of this discussion, has adultery sunk into indiscretion;

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and we doubt not that we shall soon see a new edition of the Decalogue for the use of fashionable folks, in which the seventh commandment will run thus-" Thou shalt not commit indiscretion.”. The lamentable instances which have lately occurred of this particular species of indiscretion, which seems to spread with incredible rapidity in the fashionable world, should induce every public writer to set his face. against every practice which can tend to lessen its atrocity, or to diminish its wickedness, in the eyes of the public. We are fully convinced, that its growth has been promoted, in no inconsiderable degree, by the indecent levity with which acts of adultery, in high life, have been treated in some of the public prints. And any thing which contributes to lessen the disgust which modesty and virtue naturally experience at the contemplation of vice, has a direct and immediate tendency to produce the same effect. A modest female will shrink from a woman who lives in a state of whoredom or adultery; but she can accustom herself to talk of one who is only under the protection of a gentleman.

Of the three cases which have been, as it were, incidentally introduced into this inquiry, namely, O'Mara's, Carter's, and Kennet's, though two of them have been deemed irrelevant, as having no relation to the professional duty of the commander-in-chief; they are all, certainly, of a nature to throw a light on the disposition and general conduct of the Duke, and to remove a great deal of that improbability which has furnished one of the grounds of argument for his defence. The case of poor Carter is simply this-that the Duke converted his mistress's foot-boy into a gentleman, by giving him a commission in the army. We put it to any officer in the army, whether, if the colonel of a regiment had done this, it would not have occasioned a general discontent, and have been considered as an instance of ungentlemanly conduct, which constitutes a military offence. We do not mean to cast the smallest reflexion on the young man, whose conduct appears to have been truly praiseworthy, and who has gained promotion, not, as Colonel Gordon would call it, in the regular way, by money, but by his own merit. Let no false pride now deprive him of the fruits of his good conduct; but let him enjoy them in peace. But the merit which he subsequently displayed makes no difference as to the misconduct of the commander-in-chief, in raising him from the kitchen to the mess rɔom. It has been urged, indeed, that a colonel in the army, in a confidential situation with an illustrious personage, was himself a foot