The Sun.
London, England, 1820-10-06 00:00:00

some few remarks on the case, generally, before
he opened the evidence in defence. He would
ask, how it was possible, if the guilt of her Ma-
jesty were so notorious as the preamble of the
Bill charged, that proof was so long in its pre-
paration and production ? It was proverbial,
-that a plain case could not nefal such delay.
If a man assassinated another in the noon day
at Charing Cross, he could not be guilty of
that crime without numerous witnesses to
attest his iniquity, and bring him to con-
dign punishment. It was the commission of
the crime at midnight, in the dark, and in se-
cret, that rendered proof precarious, and yet
here the guilt of her Majesty was charged to
exist in the face of day. If it were really so,
the Learned, Counsel would ask, why had so
great a delay occurred in getting up and bringing
forward this case ? How was it, too, that with
all the proof addued on the subject, her Ma-
jesty's chambermaid,. who had attended her in
the first two months•of her travels, had not been
called ? These inconsistencies argued the feeble-
tness of the case on the other side, and showed
the ingenuity with which it had been got up. He
would now ask whence all this delay—why is' a
se,aeleigt next, in point of enormity to that of
high treason'rept'Ack to this season ? Why was
a period of three years suffered to elapse before
the facts were brought under judicial observa-
tion—a time, which he begged leave to state, if
suffered to pass by before a charge of treason
were brought, would render that charge alto-
gether nugatory ? Could it be pretended that the
conduct of the Queen Consort of this Realm, or
if not actually the Queen Consort, the wife of the
Representative of the Sovereign, acting as the
head of the Executive, was a matter of no im-
portance to this nation ? Could that be urged as
an excuse for the delay which had taken place
in the production of proof ? Surely not. Would
it not be surmised, then, he would ask, that it
was not what the Queen had done in Italy, but
the fact of her coming over to England that gave
rise to the charges in the preamble of this Bill ?
And when this Was known, he would ask, as the
humble advocate of her Majesty, whether it ought
not to operate in favour ofher case ? It was for the
framers of this Bill to explain the causes for this
delay ; but if the interpretation he had given to
the facts were true, then he conceived a consi-
derable shade would be thrown over the whole
transaction in the eyes of their Lordships.—
He would now return to the more particular line
of observation which he was yesterday-pursuing,
on certain parts of the evidence to which he
wished to call their Lordships attention, and in
so doing, he would endeavour to give them as
little trouble as possible. lie would first of all
ask how it was that a case of the nature which
this had been described to be, should be so long
in being proved ?. He had always deemed, that
facts were easy of proof in exact proportion to
their notoriety. If the case had rested upon
midnight transactions, and deeds performed in
the depths of privacy, some difficulty might be
conceived to hang over the proof. But how did
it happen,y, as was stated in the preamble of the
Bill, this was a case of the most scandalous noto-
riety and publicity, that it had been found ne-
cessary to have recourse to such evidence to prove
it, as that of persons peeping through suspicioUs
crannies and keyholes of apocryphal or doubtful
existence, such as that of the witness from
Trieste, who seemed as if he had only been
spared for a time from the atonement due tb the
offended laws of his country, for the purpose of
contributing his talent to the support of this case.
The Learned Getitleman pursued this strain of
observation for a considerable time, and then re-
sumed his comments on the evidence of Dumont.
Permit me now, said Mr. Williams, to call your
Lordships' attention to some of the detached
facts, or rather, if I may so say, acts of the case
on which the adverse case depends,and to shortly
state how and in what manner we propose to meet
these cases, or some of them. My Lords, surely
the preliminary facts that I have stated to your
Lordships, will at once account for its being ex-
tremely probable that we may not have all the
proof in favour of the Queen, which we have
reason to believe and know now exists. If power
has. been exercised to bring witnesses against her,
and they had exercised power to prevent those in
her favour coining forward, how hard were the
terms her • Majesty had to contend with in
this case: My Lords, in addition to that,
I am in no condition to state the evidence on be-
half of her Majesty, and to meet those charges
with that detail and with that minutia: it was ex-
pected should arise from the well-prepared, di-
ges ted,and concocted briefs of my Learned Friends.
Surely, from the sundry examinations which were
had abroad and at home, it might be expected
that they at least knew well what their wit-
nesses had to prove. Two witnesses,,indeed, in
order to " make assurance doubly sure," had
not only been examined, but, contrary to all pre-
cedent, had been sworn. My Lords, in addition
to that, the evidence of her Majesty the Queen
is not arranged and corrected. I am not igno-
rant, my Lords, that probably if the Queen had
been pleased to ask it, that a longer period might
have been allowed, but I will state to your Lord-
ships why her Majesty could not allow that de-
lay to take place. Her Majesty has patience, it
has been tried; and she has had abundant
opportunities of exercising it. She has for-
titude, and she has had frequent opportunities
of displaying it. But, my Lords, she had not
patience or fortitule enough to permit this case
to slumber, on that judicial but most unnatural
and unphysical equilibrium of all the evidence,
and two speeches being in one balance, and no-
thing at all,,not even the fragment of a sentence
or the breath of the Counsel for the Queen in the
other ; she wouid not allow them to stop there,
and could not ; therefore, her patience and her
fortitude, great as they are, were not sufficient
to sustain the trial, for the hearing to be all (W
one side of the scale. No one, my Lords, can
have fortitude enough to blame the Queen for
that conduct. That is a reason why it is not to
,be expected from her to give to your Lordships
that regular and systematical detail which ought