The National Register.
London, England, 1820-07-16 00:00:00

BILL OF PAINS AND PENALTIRS.

As the public mind appears to be exclusively
occupied by it, we shall once more resume the sub-
ject of the Queen, and having pointed out still
more particularly than in our last the nature and
tendency of " the Bill of Divorce" proposed by
Ministers, we shall submit to the country at large
our opinion as to that line of conduct which ought
now to be pursued, and which, if it be not pur-
sued, the Queen may be made a sacrifice to the
convenience of Ministers and to the perjuries of
foreigners, who may lend themselves to the secret
enemies of the Queen. Although we have not the
least doubt that the charges against her Majesty are
charges at least as unfounded, as history declares
those against Anna Boleyn to have been.
The Bill of Divorce then, or, in other words, the
Bill of Pains and Penalties, whereby the Queen,
upon the passing thereof, is to forfeit her rank and
subsistence, as well as lose all her honours, is intro-
duced as a measure recommended by a Committee
stominated, in the House of Lords, by Ministers.
The consequence of this Bill, considered as a process
of a judicial kind, is, to deprive the defendant of
every possible advantage which, by any other mode
of trial, she would have had ; for had she been tried
by impeachment of the Commons, for high treason, or
prosecuted by his Majesty's Attorney-General, then
would she have had lists of the witnesses brought
against her, and full means of obtaining evidence as to
their conduct and character; whereas the present pro-
ceeding, which the amiable and sincere man who
was once her noble and learned advocate, pretends
to be all out of tenderness to the Queen, deprives
her Majesty of those advantages to which the lowest
subject of the realm would, in case of high treason,

be entitled, while that amiable man and his friends
in power all acknowledge that it is not their fault
that she is not tried for high treason, but in

consequence of a defect in the statute with regard
to the law in this case. In an open and con-
stitutional Court, before the Lords in their regular
capacity as judges : in such a Court, as also in
a common civil, or ecclesiastical Court, had the
matter been tried as a case of adultery between man
and wife, all those pleas, which are po powerful, of
destitution and extreme provocation, might have
been alleged in behalf of the defendant, which the
tender mercies of these kind-hearted gentlemen
now exclude--these tender-Aearted creatures, who

could prejudge a woman and a stranger, being at
once a wife and widow—these good Chriatiatu, who
learn from their Bible that true religion, and unde-
filed before God, is to visit the widow and the
fatherless in affliction—who could prejudge the cause

of the fatherless and the widow by striking her out
of the Liturgy, where, if she were really a sinner,
her name would with so much the more propriety
have been uttered in the prayer to the throne of
mercy—who could then bring out of a jury chamber,
selected by themselves, charges against this same
person, without one of those means of judging, from
personal examination and perception of those inter-
nal evidences arising from the voice and manner of
evidence on the part of the prosecution—these men,
against whom we raise a voice which, we trust, will
be echoed through the nation and the whole civilised
world, shaking the throne of that Monarch abroad,
if such a base wretch there be, who would pander
to the destruction of a kinswoman and female, to re-
pay the debt of gratitude he owes to Britain ! These
men, wo say, have made the attempt to crush this
Stranger by weight of political power; they have
tried the House of Commons, as well as the Lords,
if they would institute also a Green Bag Committee
to prejudge the question there, as they have suc-
ceeded elsewhere ; and though the Green Bag in
the Commons has been rejected with contempt, yet
the attempt remains to posterity to prove the inten-
tion ; and with what face the House of Commons
can for a moment entertain the Bill of Divorce,