cluded by putting in copies of the Morning Herald of Saturday and Monday last, the parts of which alluded to were entered as read, and then moved a humble address to the prince regent, expressive of the deep concern and indignation which the house felt at publications of so gross and scandalous a nature, so painful to the feelings of his royal highness and all the other branches of his illustrious family; and pray. ing that his royal highness would be pleased to order proper measures to be taken for bringing to justice all the persons concerned in so scan dalous a business; and particularly for preventing the continuance or repetition of so high an offence. The question being put, Lord Castlereagh said, he hoped the main attention of the house would be directed to the practicable purposes which could be expected from the motion with which the honourable gentleman had concluded. Was it conciliation which the honourable gentleman had in view? In what respect was his motion, far less the speech with which he had prefaced it, calculated to produce conciliation? The papers of the next day after the letter first published had made its appearance, instead of showing any abstinence from further discussion on the subject, contained two letters of his majesty himself. He agreed that the monarchy itself was concerned in the course now to be pursued, and that it was never more concerned in any thing than in the measure now to be taken by parliament. Much injury, in his opinion, was to be apprehended from such speeches as that which they had heard to-night from the honourable gentleman. He did not wish to interrupt the honourable gentle man, though he must be allowed to say, that it appeared to him that the honourable gentleman, under the pretext of vindicating the prin cess of Wales, had indulged in illi beral, unfair, and, as he (lord Castlereagh) thought, unparliamentary observations on the conduct of the prince of Wales himself. Mr. Whitbread moved that the words of the noble lord be taken down. If he himself had followed the course ascribed to him by the noble lord, it would have been his lordship's duty to have moved that he (Mr. Whitbread) be committed to the Tower. The speaker said, the rule in such cases was to have the expres sion taken down, as stated by the person objecting to it to have been used, and then to let the party charged with using it, either admit or deny his having used the words objected to. Mr. Whitbread dictated the words used by lord Castlereagh; when Lord Castlereagh said, he had nothing in them to alter. The speaker observed, that then it remained for the noble lord to explain or vindicate the words he had used. Lord Castlereagh said, he should go on to make good what he had asserted. The honourable gentleman, in pursuing this question, had gone the length of stating, that if the conduct of the princess of Wales was at all criminal, hers was a crime arising out of the conduct of the prince of Wales. Mr. Whitbread spoke to order. He denied what had now fallen from the noble lord. The noble lord was sufficiently skilled in debate, and in the practice of that house, to have stopped him (Mr. Whitbread) if he had so expressed himself; neither would the speaker have allowed him so to talk of the crown, or of the person virtually holding it. The speaker was of opinion lord Castlereagh had a right to go on. Lord Castlereagh said, he had not interrupted the honourable member, because his observations applied only to the prince of Wales, and not to the person holding the crown; and he termed this conduct on the part of the honourable gentleman illiberal, attacking, as it was, a person in his absence. Mr. Tierney spoke to order. If this mode of proceeding were adopted, a person who had no such intention as that imputed to him, might have any charge fixed upon him argumentatively. Mr. Whitbread explained, that if any thing which had dropt from him could warrant the charge made against him by the noble lord, he could only say that it was by no means his intention. Lord Castlereagh said that was quite satisfactory. The question then was, if the proposition of the hon. gentleman was one which it would be consistent with the duty they owed the public for that house to adopt? his motion being to call two printers to the bar of the house; or rather, to order them to be prosecuted by the attorney-general, after the interval of a fortnight, during which almost every document on all sides had been published. The whole line of argument pursued by the honourable gentleman went to show that there was no use for any trial, rather than to show that a trial was necessary; and indeed, from the speech of the honourable gentleman this night, it would rather seem as if it had been his wish to put the four commissioners on their trial. He thought, if the honourable gentle man had intended thus to lay his case, that it would have been but friendly in him to have apprised his noble friend (lord Erskine) of his intention. At all events, it would have been fair to have given an honourable and learned friend of his (sir Samuel Romilly) some idea of his intention, that, as that learned gentleman (then solicitor-general) acted as secretary in the course of the investigation, he might have been enabled to give an explana tion, or rather an answer, to the observation of the honourable gentleman. The honourable gentleman said, parliament should interpose, to the effect of giving to her royal highness the protection of the law. His lordship did not know that her royal highness was deprived of its protection. No step could be taken against her but under the law; and when proceedings at law were instituted, then would the protection of the law be open to her, as to every person else. He was not aware of any intention, in any quarter, which should render it necessary for her royal highness to resort to the law. When any seizure should be made for the sake of depriving one of their liberty, as in the case of the princess Caroline Matilda, it would then be time enough to provide against it. The honourable gentle man was rather tardy in complaining of the sin of disclosure in this case. No principle or end of justice could be served by complying with the present motion; and he had no doubt the house would consult its own dignity by negativing it. Mr. Ponsonby stated it as his firm conviction, that his honour able friend, in the warmth of his zeal, had been misled; and that the person who had put that unauthenticated paper into his hands as Mrs. Lisle's deposition, had deceived him. He was sure, when the matter came to be sifted, that it would be found so; and that the four commissioners had equally done their duty to the crown and justice to Mrs. Lisle. He was sorry, however, those four commissioners being all peers, that they could not be present in that house to answer for themselves and he was sorry also, that his honourable and learned friend was not present, because of his high character and legal knowledge, and because, if any improper depositions had been suffered to be taken, his honourable and learned friend was as culpable as the four noble lords. But he had such a firm reliance upon the known probity and integrity of those noble lords, that he was satisfied, when the whole came to be thoroughly investigated, it would be found that nothing had been done but what was strictly warranted and legal. He had, however, written a note to his honourable and learned friend (sir S. Romilly) to inform him of what had happened since he quitted the house, and to request his presence in the course of the evening. With regard to the motion, he should certainly support it, but from reasons very different from those urged by his honourable friend. His object, in voting for the motion, was to put an end to it altogether; to extinguish that frightful and horrid scene; and if the house refused to accede to it, might they not expect that other disgusting and nauseous anecdotes would be put forth? And if so, whom would that house have to blame but itself? because, when a motion was before it, whose object was to check the odious stream, they refused to grant it. If it should prove so, he trusted that no man would say in that house afterwards, that there existed a spirit in the country to revile and traduce royalty; that there was an anti-monarchical disposition in the land: such reproaches he hoped never to hear in that house again, because, let whatever would be printed, they could have no cause to complain. The motion now before them, if accepted, would put a stop to the publications in question; if rejected, would encourage them; and, before another month, elapsed, would make them all bitterly lament their refusal of it. Mr. Bathurst spoke against the motion. consequence Mr. Stephen rose in of an attack on the memory of an illustrious friend of his, the revered and lamented Mr. Perceval. When the honourable mover took merit to himself for not doing justice to the memory of that virtuous minister; when he talked of sparing his character, by not drawing a comparison between his conduct on a former occasion, and that of the honourable gentleman himself now, it was barely possible to listen to him with patience and moderation. Mr. Perceval had undertaken to superintend a book containing the evidence in the case of the princess of Wales, for her royal highness; and if as her advocate he had omitted any passages, to what would he have exposed her and himself? To the charge of having omitted and withheld parts of the testimony, and thereby invalidated the whole. He believed that this was the first time the mention of immorality had ever been connected with the name of Perceval, or that he had been accused of disregard to the decencies of life, who had been so eminent an example of respect to them all. But did the honourable gen tleman tleman mean to say, that as the princess of Wales's counsel, in an appeal she was about to make to the public, he had any choice in altering or abridging the evidence on which that appeal was founded? And what was the letter which had been called "threatening?" It was written upon the supposition, that, by her exclusion from court being enforced, a sanction would be conferred not only upon the charge of levity, but upon the more serious accusations which had been brought against the princess-that she ought not to acquiesce in this ignominy, but afford the public an opportunity of judging of her conduct. Ought Mr. Perceval, in this case, to have garbled the evidence? Even the honourable gentleman, with all his predilection for garbling, would scarcely say that ought to have been done. If a line had been suppressed, the argument would have been against the princess. He deeply deplored that her royal highness had not such advisers now as she had at that time. The honourable gentleman had un, dertaken a heavy responsibility by reading the paper relative to Mrs. Lisle's evidence that paper from which he had drawn accusations against four noble lords, and the learned gentleman now in his place, (sir S. Romilly, who had come in) -accusations which, if true, proved that they had acted in a manner highly perfidious to the trust reposed in them, and dishonourable to men in any rank in life. For what was the charge? That they had put words into the mouths of witnesses which they had never used, and extracted evidence by means of questions improper for a judge to put, and which would not have been permitted if the parties had had any legal advisers with them. If these were so, these noble lords were more reprehensible than he had words to express. But he doubted the honourable gentleman's information. He ridiculed the knight-errantry of the honourable gentleman, which, instead of procuring the evidence to be revised, was evaporated in an attack upon two editors. As for that conciliation which, he said, belonged to the letter he had written for the princess, and read to the house, he (Mr. Stephen) did not see all that conciliatory temper in it. To him it looked more like a triumph on what had passed in that house. But he gladly relinquished the subject, having fulfilled the object for which he rose, to vindicate from the aspersion of want of a reconciliatory spirit between man and wife, Mr. Perceval, who was himself an ornament to the conjugal state. Sir Samuel Romilly having entered the house, rose and said, he was informed a statement had been made since he quitted the house, which he was compelled to do from urgent professional avocation, that very nearly concerned himself. He did not impute it to any want of candour on the part of his honourable friend, that such a statement took place in his absence; and he was extremely sorry it was not pos sible for him, at that moment, to give the explanation that might be wished. The house would have in its recollection, that he stated on a former evening he had been present at all the examinations but one, on which day he did not receive the notice time enough to attend. It unfortunately happened that day was the last one; it was the third of July; and on that day Mrs. Lisle's examination took place. He was sorry it so occurred, not only for himself, but for the noble lords F 3 whose whose conduct had been questioned. But he could say, that unless the examination on that day differed from all former days, it was impossible that the statement put into the hands of his honourable friend could be correct. The witnesses were uniformly examined by the two law lords, Erskine and Ellen borough; the questions were never in any instance taken down; only the answers; in the same way as was always done, he believed, when depositions were made before a magistrate. The information was then read over before the witnesses, who altered and corrected whatever they thought required it; after which they signed the whole. That course had been regularly pursued; he had himself taken down the evidence; never asking any questions himself, nor suggesting any; and if he were upon his oa h, (though he believed it was hardly necessary to say so,) he would affirm that the answers were taken down precisely as they were given. Some of the witnesses, af er their depositions had been read to them, requested to read them themselves, which they did, and sometimes made alterations, which alterations would be found as they were made in the originals, for no fair copies were ever made of them. Unless, therefore, quite a different course was pursued on the last day to what had been adopted on any other day, the evidence on that day would be found as taken down in the handwriting of one of the four lords. mation. That, regarding it as a proof of his majesty's opinion of his zeal and integrity, he did his duty to the best of his power: but it was in the performance of that duty that some person, with the most abandoned and detestable slander, had dared to charge him with a gross act of dishonesty; him, on whose character for integrity, diligence, and care, depended more of the property and interests of the people than on those of any other man in the country; yet of him it was foully and slanderously alleged, that he had falsified the evidence given before the commission, giving in as a document evidence that was not received, and suppressing that which was actually given. This was all a lie,-a vile slander,—all false as hell. He would not violate the propriety of that house; he knew the respect and decency it required; but he must give the lie to falsehood. The noble lord then explained, that one night, when the commissioners had met to examine witnesses, the solicitor-general (sir S. Romilly,) who had been appointed to arrange and take down evidence, was absent from home, and could not be found. The examination proceeded, and the commissioners requested that he would take down the evidence of the witnesses in attendance. He declared upon the most sacred asseveration that could be made, the most solemn sanction of an oath,-that every word of that deposition came from the lips of the witness in question,-that every word of it was read over to her, if not paragragh by paragraph as it was taken down, certainly all after it was taken,-and every sheet signed with her name. House of lords, March 22.Lord Ellenborough, alluding to the evidence of Mrs. Lisle, read by Mr. Whitbread in the house of commons, and commented on by that gen leman, said that his name had been inserted in the commission of inquiry without any previous inti Lord Erskine deemed it scarcely necessary to vindicate himself from such an imputation as falsifying evidence. |