The Sun. — London, England, 1820-10-25 00:00:00

, lr ~~flY If thes e Ladies had been examined it would have b een impossible that this wretched case could ewer have Veen brought forward.—And why. were th ey . , not called ? For the same reason, he pre s for which Dr. Holland' had not been called, namely, that knowing most about her ajesty's conduct, they khew more than was consistentstent with the purposes of the prosecu i i o n • The Learned Gentleman proceeded to Pint out several other instances in which testimony of Majocci had been met .by di rect contradicti o ns f rom o ther witnesses ofun doubted verac i ty. Th e f acts were no t i n t hemselve s perhaps, of much moment, but alto gether they shewed the disposition of the man to make 13 .1) a case to prove himself worthy of his li r ec But, independently of such contradictions, h ' had never seen in the coarse of a legal inquiry 1 1 7 witness so demolished by his own testimony. "(missions had been extracted from him by dribl e t s, li ke drops 61 blood from, his h e art, w hi c h sp ewed that h e wa s a being wholly unworthy of credit,iii and that, whatever his memory May be, Il ls principlei are such as well qualified him to be Mistres s of thatinfarnous conspiracy to ruin his Royal which he (Mr. Denman) would point out te , t he indignation of their Lordships. Before en rerulg on that view of the case, however, lie must w rest the' attention of their Lordships .to some t ` e ter parts of the ; evidence, as it rested on the truth, it of Dumont and Majocci, although, in 4h "/ it was but a waste of time to comment on At Page thing which rested - on their authority alone. I , ll Page 13 Majocci' spoke of. a secret staircase, e , ',eh led to a small apartment not frequently sc e .u• Lieut. Hownam says it was not a secret t e al i r , c ase) it was frequently used, and that led ga 'is room. Majocci swore (page 15) that Ber eli dined at the table of her Royal Highness at 1 5 0 ‘ 1 "a• • By the evidence of Dr. Holland (page pe ') and subsequently by Mr. Hownam, it ap ti ar ed that on no one of the occasions so men n:ned•did Bergami dine with her Royal High thss• Though these were trifling circumstances, th . e Y Served t o show what description of person is o was, an d that h e wa s worthy of his hire. He j e " not.thi n k th a t ever a witnessmo - in any Court of s tice was so completely demolished by his 1v , ° , 8 , s'examination. They did not . charge him °f was watit of •recollection, what they corriplained was his too .tenacious memory in some Cases ; ha l fis recollection of sleeping with his eyes 4t . x .,.°Pen, and many other minute circumstances ea ; 'and his total want of . -recollection of ta n ' s °f great moment, as " I do not recollect v ,uleg received any money from Lord Stewart." h at reliance could be placed upon such a me mory'lt was quite obvious that that infamous D e a r a s° l l canine here determined , to earn.his money, n rt t: determin e d to ruin his mistress. He should t o a ` go through all the particnlar facts stated to fre occurred, which facts had been proved by 4t iwei alone. It would be waste- of time to re to a such assertions. He was going, however, t4L .P E r 7 s' over the important fact reported to have tt :e ll place at The-Theatre at St. Carlos. It was d r t ed that the Princess was, on that occasion, v e ssed in a most indecent manner, and that she folthdrew from the Theatre long before the per dirtilance was terminated, in consequence of the t i s ti g d u a s t t ne expressed at her indecent appearance. — Dumont, when called upon to prove this (1 3 instead of speaking to the indecency of the Cres s,q spoke merely of a dress without form ; the - 1 , -es s was monstrous, it was a large red shawl. This ' a s Mad. Dumont's account ; but he bad no diffi- Ivt it Y saying that the whole was an invent i o n. to s 7 O ever rested their case upon the miserable - ` l4l °n of valets and chamberma ids ? Who eve r call e d upon a Noble Lady to relate t h e cir a44l stances of her husband'S embarrassments , t even obtained and exposed her confidential Lette rs from herself to her husband ? But he Wind notstop with simply refuting the case at 4t Ples• He would now proceed to Genoa, th here there was not a single fact established in AilVort of the general charge. From thence to 4 c ircumstance Catania, and other places. At Catania sa `' r enmstance occurred to which it was neces , it r n 7 to pay attention. • It was stated that her t'sh - lal Highness passed from Bergami's room withthat of the Countess of Oldi to her own, t a pillow in her hand. But upon whose tes- I C Q uY did this alleged fact rest ?—that of Du br:llt only, The greatest care was taken not to b: n g any one forward to corroborate it ; and yet, Y referrin g to page 278 of the minutes,it would be found that it is i m possible to believe that that might e It ° „ t have been done, for another person did not i s 'ess this extraordinary fact. Here Dumont a sked wh e th er there was any person with her hi t his room and answers that she does not recol et whether her sister was with her or not.— b i r) he would assert that it was utterly impos ofe that she should - not recollect the presence aet ! n c'ther person at such an extraordinary trans viiteu, • There were several other distinct charges l ea Tt had not been supported at all ; but of this all that rested on the two main pillars l ie 'is grand attack—Majocci and Dumont, — d w ould proceed to other persons who had en treah v Pred to m ake her Majesty the victim of 4 1 "atld perjury. The word conspiracy seem °`, Llate to excite exceeding horror in this cOuntrylditocre di s° great indeed, that' adultery was 10 d upon any -staple surmise or incre -4 le t os te timany, rather than the existence of such cri me. Yet most unhappily its commi ss ion wa s not on ly well known i n thi s country, but was b rn, freq uent. Th ere were two most extraordi nary cases w i t hi n t h e l as t -year. In one a young simply to cover a misconduct of her own, tic, absolutely accused a whole family of abduc and had sust a ined au examination of 6 hours an lle u Court, with such an appearance of truth 13 consistency, th a t no less a person than Mr. a uks, na , the Member of Parliament, who was fore of th e J ury ,i nterrupte d t h e T u d ge ,in summing . t} P l 2 to state the unanimous opinion of the Jury of 1 4 e Inilt of th e a cc u sed. A ne w trial wasap fed or and refused ; b u t finally one was grant of Pad the y o ung Lady an d h er maid convicted toe k:riury, B u t this di scovery.o f i nno c e nce came l ate to save the life o f th e 'sister of the ac ed) tils who having been charged as an accomplice was itniirisoned,atia fell a victim to her feethlgs. It came too late to render amends to an innocent fa mily; but he trusted that it had not come too late to convince their Lordships that c - Onspiracy was by no means unknown to 'England, and might be successful fora time. This seemed a very pe culiar case; but it was known - to all the profes sors of laW that there were conspirators by -pro fession----men who, for liVe shillings, would swear themselves worth any - stun that might be required, to-bail persons who would accept of their ser vices. Another case' of - great notoriety had re cently • occurred in . :regard to- a fictitious bank ruptcy.' He alluded to the case of Cohen, in which debts, credits, and circumstances, were fa bricated with equal fraud and ingenuity. A si milar case occurred, in which he was himself con cerned ; and about -a ye'ar and a half ago a ficti tious firm contrived to carry on depredations upon the Public to an enormous amount. All these things \ had recently happened in England ; and •• if he might be :• allowed to go further back, - their Lordships would remember the no torious conspiracy of Elizabeth Canning, who Contrived a tissue of systematic falsehood for a • purpose of her own. Was the gunpowder plot to - be regarded as a romance ;or Titus- Oates, the hero. - of a •novel? It was known that at a particular time King - James IL, when Duke of York, was- anxious to get clear of his marriage with the daughter of the Earl of Clarendon ; and Grammont related the plausible manner in which three noblemen contrived to accumulate presUmptions of adultery agaiu.st the ill-treated lady, and in which a fourth Went so far as to prove the grant of the last Ifavoar to himself. There had been persons found to gratify Princes in all ages, when they had condescend ed to indulge the lowest passions in the highest places.--The case of Anne Boleyn was too well known to be dwelt upon. Evidence was then offered of the guilt of that un- happy lady with her own brother, which had been since entirely discredited—evidence which, however, was infinitely more respectable than that which had been offered against her pre sent Majesty. But they had au instance of a conspiracy still more fecent---that of 1806, which it was impossible to forget. In the former con spiracy of 1806 their Lordships would find in the Minutes of the Privy Council who sat upon that case, a verdict of acquittal• upon an individual, against whom there was no charge. He referred to the words in the minute, " suborned tradu cers," and contended, that if no suspicion had been excited, the Counsel would not have no ticed those expressions. They did not deny that there were no traducers, although they denied the application of the words. But if any one wished to get up a conspiracy, in casting his eyes about to find where he should fix the scene of it, where could he establish his regards with greater hope of security than upon Italy—where assassins were to be hired, and an oath had its price-- where instruments of fraud and violence were to be purchased at all prices ? It was impos sible to say with truth, that any individuals brought from such a quarter could be admitted as unsuspected witnesses in any English Court of Justice, when aspersions were to be cast on the character of any party. He ought, perhaps, to observe that in the course of the opening of this case, another count was laid with respect to what happened at Livoilia, which the subsequent evi dence not only failed to prove, but actually dis proved. Every circumstance was laid out in the most favourable point of view. Bergami was the only person who had free access to her Majesty's chamber—the bed evidently chewed the following morning that her Majesty had not lain alone,bear ing marks of two persons having slept there. In ordinary-cases, that fact alone would be sufficient proof of adultery having been committed. He knew his Learned Friend did not cast• imputations at random. How then came he to make the charge at all 2 Why, he was instructed so to do by Dumont —he was instructed so to do on the strength of what Dumont had sworn before the Milan Com mission ; but which she dared not repeat when brought into open Court, and called upon so lemnly to speak nothing but the truth, and in a situation to be contradicted if she departed from that injunction. Then, he hoped, they were to hear no more about adultery ; for which there was not an atom of evidence. The crime of adul tery was charged again at Lugano ; and, as in the other parts of the case, no evidence was brought to attempt the proof of it. And here he must .complain of the conduct of his Learned Friends on the other side ; for notwithstanding their as sertion, he must say that he did not believe that there wag any witness from Lugano who could prove the fact of adultery. He did not doubt that his Learned Friends were instructed to make this charge ; but before they brought it, they ought to have made more accurate, and more extensive inquiries than they had done. He repeated that he did not believe that any think against her Majesty could be brought from Lu gano.; but it served very well to satisfy those who were ready to believe any thing, however absurd, or however gross against her Majesty, to call out, " Oh, more evidence could have been adduced,had there but been time for it allowed." It appeared that they were driven back on the 27th of June, and they had not been able to bring them here by the 7th of September., It was really too much to believe. lie was con vinced that his Learned Friend could not by possibility bring a single witness more than he had brought. He felt himself here called upon to little heat into which offer some excuse for any his Learned Friends near him, or himself, might have been betrayed in the course of these proceed ings. If they had been g uilt y of utte ring all y invec 'rives or declarations• in their addresses to their Lordships, their excuse was, that they had been taken by surprise by some on e of the many extraor dinary parts of this proceeding, and the nature of these, as well as the frequency of their occur rence, he apprehended would be an adequate apology for all their transgressions of this de scription. This had been the case yesterday, when they were certainly taken by surprise.— To return, however, to the case before him, he must ask if titere ever was an opening so totally disproved by the evidence as the opening of these proceedings had been. He appealed to every legal man, whether in the course of his legal practice he had ever witnessed such a.fall ing oil. This could not be owing to his Learned Friends on the other side having been taken by surprise. This was a circumstance which might, and did often happen in the course of a hurried and active practice in the Courts below. It did sometimes happen there that a Counsel was taken by surprise, and had scarcely time to read his brief. But that could not be the case here. —On the other side, they had had 'their Milan Commission and their llanoverian Commission, sit ting for years to prepare all matters for them. They had their spies, of all nations ; they had the depositions of their witnesses, which had been sworn to at Milan, and again here, for upwards of six weeks before, them ; and all this, too, at a time, when there was a total absence of all other business ; and his Learned Friends were not so young in business as not to be supposed to have profited of every moment they had. Yet with all these advantages, they had entirely failed to make out a proof of any thing_ like adultery since the arrival of the Queen at Naples up to the present period. It was, therefore, with some degree of confidence that he ' looked -at the other parts of the accusation against her Majesty. If that great master of the human heart, Shakespeare, wanted a villain to asperse and vilify a vir tuous wife, an lago, or an lachimo, he always went to Italy to seek him, .either to Sicily or Milan, and there he laid the scene of his plot ting ; there he bought his evidence. Shake speare, in describing false witnesses, did not use the fashionable terms of the day, " perjured witnesses," he spoke in plainer, but not less forcible language. In describing two witnesses from Messina, he two Gentlemen, or at least in the situation of Gentlemen, who had re ceived , lOOO ducats for the evidence they gave to convict an injured woman, he disposes of them in the following manner:—An Officer of Justice, in all the official dignity of his place, in quires" who be the malefactors ?" The answer was, " that be I and my partner." The character who said this was in fact the prosecutor or ac cuser; he spoke from ignorance, but was in truth not very far wrong, for he was a Commis sioner. When the same worthy was asked what the prisoners had done to entitle them being sent to prison, he replied,—" Marry, Sir, they have committed false report ; moreover they have spoken untruths ; secondarily, they are slanderers ; sixth and lastly, they have belied a Lady; thirdly, they have verified unjust things; and to conclude, they are lying knaves." He asked their Lordships' pardon for this digression, which, nevertheless he could not think was in appropriate, considering the quotation he had made was from near the end of the last act of the comedy of " Much ado about Nothing."— SuppoSing the witnesses in this case to be very respectable, he must say, that he had never heard 'of any witnesses beine so well paid before. Gor gonio, the Captain of ship, of whom by the way he might say they would never have heard of his existence, as he would have sunk himself and his ship too, had not Lieutenant Flynn also had some -command in the vessel; this man, it appeared, received 'seven hundred and fifty dol lars a month for the use of his ship, the interest of his money, and all expenses. But then con sidering he had a royal cargo, he calculated more on uncertain profits than any' thing else ; and it turned out that he looked forward to getting 6000 dollars more ; of which sum he was disap pointed by Bergami. This man then came to this country, and was allowed 1000 dollars a month, equal to the salary of the first Officers of the State in his own country, to give that monstrous evidence which he had given. But independently of this monthly stipend, he also expressed an ex pectation that he should reclaim from the Go vernment of this country the 6000 dollars which he had been disappointed of by Bergami. He made application for this, and came to this coun try for the purpose of enforcing his claim, and did any one believe that he did not feel that he would not enforce it successfully, if in his evi deuce he did not 'go to the greatest extremity ? It was idle, after this, to talk of impartiality in the witnesses. It was almost impossible to come with an unbiassed mind in a case of this great importance; and it was therefore the more necessary that the witnesses should come with clean hands into Court. But he charged this man with being a bribed witness, coming here to add falsehood to atrocity, and to give to innocent circumstances the appearance of guilt. Was it to be believed that her Royal Highness would have gone on deck in open face of day, and in the view of the whole crew and passengers.of the vessel, to sit on a sofa, Or on a gun, or In ally other place or attitude, for the purpose of any thing like improper intercourse. But what kissing, what embracing, would not a thousand dollars a month help a weak,case to ? He repeated, that having got the frame-work for this case, in the affability and condescension of her Royal High ness, the conspirators set to work to scrape together such witnesses as Garguillo, and such incidents as he had sworn to, to make out a case with which to dupe the Government of this country. Where was a witness to be found, who, for seven hundred and fifty or one thousand dollars per month, would object to add a little fact or two to the already established incontrovertible Ono of sleeping under the tent— facts which served to give the colouring to that leading circumstance, and turn that Which was most innocent in itself into -all that suspicion could suggest of guilty conduct, and all that falsehood and malignity could de vise ? He said, that if the fact deposed to by those bribed, wicked witnesses, was intended co be the ground-work of suspicion again -..i his Illustrious Client, all those disgusting, 'indecent acts sworn to by them, ought to have, been corro borated by some of the 22 pers(P-2. 1 w h o walked the deck, which was the scene 'where they were al leged to have taken place. nut, above all, they ought to have been swom t o b v the steersman,w ho .could better than e..ny one h ave s p o k e n to them. MS - absence he must look upon as criminal, his silence acquittal. If they had intended to make out an honest case against his Client, why did they not examine Lieutenant Flynn before they at tempted to bring the charges ? He should now come to a part of the case which had been urged with all - practicable force against her Majesty— he meant the assertion that her Majesty had shown a marked partiality for foreigners to the exclu- Sion of 14.:nglislimen. It had been said, and urged arid repeated, that her Majesty had in her travels avoided the society of the English. He could meet general assertion by general assertion of much greater weight. Her Majesty's attachment to the English was notorious, and a fact which stood in evidence, afforded a complete answer to all this general and invidious assertion. It was the circumstance that her Majesty had applied to ; and secured an English captain to accompany her in her long voyage on board the polacre. He should pass on to the journey from Syracuse,upou which point an attempt had been made to esta blish a chain of circumstances on the testimony of Majocci. But he had been unsupported both by Dumont, who must have known of those cir cumstances if they had taken place, and by another discarded servant, who, when prompted by the Attorney-General, appeared to have for gotten what he was expected to prove, and said. he knew nothing about it. The Learned Gentleman was proceeding under much evident exhaustion, when . The Earl of LIVERPOOL rose and said, he was sure he only spoke the general feeling of the House, in suggesting that the LearnefGentle man shouli be permitted to retire until he had refreshed himself. Mr. DEN3l:ts thanked his Lordship, and ob served, that in the course of the day he would avail himself of the kind suggestion. • The LORD CHANCELLOR said, the House, he had no doubt, would adjourn, if the Learned Gen tleman felt himself too much exhausted to pro ceed. His duty was most arduous, and the House was disposed to shew him every accommo. dation. By the advice of his friends, the Learned Gentleman determined to retire now, and - he ac cordingly requested half an hour's indulgence. The House therefore adjourned for half an hour. • Mr. DENMAN returned at half past two, and resumed. He should now draw their Lordships' attention to that part of the case which referred to her Royal Highness's determination to visit the-Archipelago, the Greek Islands, and the Holy Sepulchre. For this purpose she hired a polacre, slept iu a tent on the land, and although enduring great privations, lived iu a delightful familiarity with all those who accompanied her. It was from a circumstance which was never denied, that the Advocates for the Bill attempted to bring their Lordships to the inference that adultery had been committed. It was the fact of Bergatni's having been seen in the day-time resting under the same tent with her Royal Highness. Ma jocci was the witness examined .to prove that which was already admitted, and to give a con sequent appearance of weight to that width had never been denied. But Majocci had suppressed the fact of the Countess of Oldi being constantly, and the little Vic or:ue being invariably under the tent likewise. Majocci could speak L.) trifling circumstances of her Royal Highness's journey, but not to those which were likely to fix a man's memory. For instance, he could not give the remotest idea of how long her Royal Highness travelled on the average every day, and he had carefully suppressed the fact that she was so exhausted by fatigue, that she constantly required some one to be near her. But Lieut. Hownam stated, that her Royal Highness was often so fatigued, as scarcely to be able to dis mount from the mule on which she rode. Was it possible, he asked, that he could be called upon to argue that this was not a proof of adultery. Could any person be so uncandid, so unjust, as to say, he believed that adultery had been committed under that tent by her Royal Highness, after it had been proved that neither herself nor Bergami were undressed any part of the time ? He defied any man to lay his hand upon his heart, and say, he believed that the charge of adultery had, to his mind, been esta blished from this circumstance. The Learned Counsel for the Bill has asked if the beds were regularly made ? expecting, no doubt, that as much pains was taken with them as on a bridal night. But what was the fact, why, that there were no bed clothes, no linen, and these parties reclined there with no other al teration from their travelling dress, than one putting on a dressing gown, and the other a cloak.—The Witness, Miss Dumont, had taken - great pains to prove an 'adulterous inter eourse between the parties, but in the courpe of her examination it was proved that the adul terous acts were as innocent as could be., He took it to be clear that there was no ground to suppose an illicit intercourse took place before they went on hoard the polacre. If tho scenes at Naples and other alleged acts of misconduct had been refuted, her Royal Highness :he Princess of Wales would stand without tho slightest impro priety of conduct until she went on hoard the .polacre. He had in that view a right to say, if there was truth in argument and justice in inference, that her Royal Highness on board the polacre was without the slightest impu tation. He should speak of what hoppened to her Royal !iighness after leaving the polacre at a su'asequent part of his surnaming up. He called upon their Lordships to con- cider in tW.s important cause, involving the fate of this Queen, her detrhonement, and de-, gradation, to be well satisfied that the act of adul tery was committed. The mere possibility of an a dulterous connection having taken place on board the polacca would not make out this case. What were the facts ? It appeared that a regular ar rangement for sleeping was made on her Majesty going on board, but in consequence of theannoy ance of the animals in the hold and the heat , of the weather, her Majesty thought proper to sleep _upon deck. That act of sleeping, on deck- had