Star.
London, England, 1820-11-15 00:00:00

WARD OF BISHOPSGATE.

Yesterday, a Meeting of the Inhabitants of the
abose Ward was held in the London Workhouse, Bi-
shopsgate-street (the church being now undergoing
repair), for the purpose of addressing the QUEEN on
the abandonment of the Bill of Pains and Penalties by

IVlinisters. Mr. Deputy GREENAWAY and Sir W.
ItAwurrs were in the Chair.

. Mr. LIEBIAITRE opened the business of the day ;
and highly censured the proposed adoption of an ex
post facto law, as unconstitutional, and leading to
arbitrary power. He had himself been in Italy, in
the very places that the Queen had visited ; and be,
could assure the Meeting, that the Queen's character
had been totally misunderstood. They ought to take
into account the difference between Italian and Eng-1
lish manners. No man, even of rank, in Italy, ever
thought of giving dinners; but if you gave him one,
you bound him to you for ever. Colonel Brown was
enabled, with the money of this country, to give fre-
quent dinners at Milan and its neighbourhood; and
it was there only that her Majesty was spoken ill of ;
'whereas, tar and wide in the other parts of Italy, he I
had •beard nothing but the highest praises of the
Queen. lie might himself have dined with Colonel
Brown; but knowing the infamous inquiry that than
person was then engaged in, he (Mr. Lemaitre) had
refused to the Gentleman who invited him (a Mr.'
Calthurpe) to sit at table with Colonel Brown. He
'was at Venice when the account of the late King's
death reached her Majesty, and he saw a letter which
she herself wrote soon after to the Countess Benzoni,
-whom he was in the habit of visiting, in which she
stated, that finding she was called try the voice of
the People, she was determined to go and shame her
enemies—(Great appl.244e).—She had refused a large
bribe to induce her to stay abroad; she had spurned
the thi eats , f her enemies, which she could not have
done but ;corn a t letning-of conscious innocence, and
siothing else—(!lear, hear!)—The firmness and con-
stancy of h !: Majesty deserved their highest conside-
ration and praise, and he trusted they would come
up to the spire.ed language of ber Majesty's Answers
to the Addresses ptesented to her, in the language
of the Resolutions and Address, which they would
that day adopt.
Mr. WHITE rose. to move certain Resolutions for
the consideration of use isleeting. lie believed that
there no longer remained any doubt as to •her
Majesty's innocence ; and as to her manners, there
was no tribunal which could inquire into 'ltem. It
any one thought there hal been levity in her Ma-
jesty's ‘ondact, let him recollect that she came from
a Court where great latiiude was allowed ; and that
-she lial come to a person, who, instead of correcting
her IllAllael s, had introduced her to the society of one 1
who WAS generally believed to be his own mistress.'
It was impossible to mistake the person to whom he
had just. lluded ; and if any man else ha.l so acted, I
woald he not have been senate] from society?—;
(Meru, hear ! )—The Resolutions which he had to'
submi. to their consideration, dean ea that they were
fully convinced of her innocence; and that, under
any ci a urnstances, they wet e prepared to defend
her. In our Government, he admitted, there were
many excellencies, and great abuses; but there was;
in the Constitution a sufficient force to correct the'
latter. If, however, they considered the circum-;
stances of the times, that the firms of law, and the I
bulwarks of the Constitution were about to have been •
destroyed, they could find that circumstances might
:wise, which would require their strong defence of
the Constitution and Laws. lie firmly believed, that
if the Bill of Pains and Penalties had passed, the put-
frig his Majeay's signature to it would have been the
signal f ,r :he destruction of himself and his Gevern- '
'meat.. aie i f the persons engaged in the bringing
of cis B;li o:.P•iins and Pena:ties before Parliament,
v as asked wnat they would do if the Bill %vete !
passed.? an 1 his anis: e was —E Do pm pass the Bil ,
an 1 I will undertake ''tat in twelve hours after, she
shall no longer be an inhabitant of this country:—
Would Englishmen have borne that? No; such a
cou"se would have been the signal for a sti uggle ;
aed if that had been Cle case, he had no hesitation as
to the part he would have taken. Old as he was, he
would yet rise up against oppression and tyranny.— l
ne whole of these proceedings hod originated in an
infamous conspirney, to get rid of this female by any
means, just or unjust. When they found Lein!
Stewart, the brother of Lord Castlereagh, and lilt' on
Ompteda, at work, they could not doubt but that
these persons had the approbation and confidence of
their employer. No Hanoverian Minister would
have dared to have acted as Baron Ontpteda had
done, if he had not been fully authorize.l by his So-
vereign and his Government !—(llear, !sear, hear!)
The petty despots of the Continent, ton, were joined
in this conspiracy ; and the Ministers at home had
been induced, by a base thirst for power, to lend
themselves to the base passions of an individual. Ile
had long been anxious to find exenses for the Minis-
ters, because he himself believed many of them to be
most worthy men in private life—good fathers, hus-
bands, and friends ; but he was now convinced, that
under the present system no man could be honest.—
There was no excuse for Ministers now. They might
have been deceived by the Milan Commission ; and
they might have retired with honour before the se-
cond reading of the Bill, after having confessed that
they had no case against her Majesty, and after hay-
ing heard her complete defence. They might then
have abandoned the Bill; and though, by so doing,
they would have offended their King, yet .could they
have established such a character, as would have led
them, in a very short space of time, to power again.
from the late proceedings in the House of Lords, the
religion of the Church of England, and the morality
of the country, had received a stab, from which they
-would never recover! The Dignitaries of the Church
of England had been pitted against each other, and
had nut been able to agree uu the expounding of a
few texts of Scripture. Ilow could they, after that,
complain of the differences among the Dissenters on
religious points? The bishop of London, who was
as tbuder a man as had ever lived, had made a strange
assertion, that, because the King politically could do
no wrong, he could do no wrong in a moral point of
view! They had heard of the Emperor of Morocco,
who amused himself by cutting off, with his own
hand, 30 or 40 of the heads of his subjects before
breakfast ; and that they were anxious for the honour,
as by that they were made sure of admission into
I'*radjse. In the suite simper, according to the

'Reverend Prelate's doctrine, might his Majesty take
off the heads of his subjects, debauch* their wives and
daughters, and yeticlo no wrong, according to the
Bishop's motions! The Nike of. Montrose, a country-
man of his (Mr. W .'s), who had for 30 years been re-
ceiving thousands of pounds ayear for being Master
'of the Horse, that is, head hostler to the King—(A
laugh)—that pauper, who had better retire to his,
estates in Scotland, and let some one else look after
the coach-horses—(A laugh)—had said, in the
House of Lords, that, notwithstanding • the Bill of
Pains and Penalties had been withdrawn, he would
never acknowledge her Majesty as his Queen, though
every one else should. The impudence of this man
was only equalled by his folly. Suppose he (Mr.\V.)
was to say he would not acknowledge the Noble Lord
to be Duke of Montrose ; why, he would still be Duke
of Montrose, in spite of him (Mr. W.); and he (Mr.
White) would be a fool, like the Noble Duke, for
having said so. He alluded to a most scandalous
story, said to have been propagated by a person of
very high rank, respecting the late King and her
Majesty, and he trusted it would be contradicted.—
He concluded by reading and moving a series of Re-
solutions, upon which the Address was to be founded.
Mr. CORDELL seconded the Resolutions, and said,
that the only offence which the Queen had conamiL-
ted, was, that she had come to this country. In re-
ference to the history of her Majesty's father and
brother, he quoted the following lines from the intro-
duction to one of the Cantos of MarMion, in which
Sir Walter Scott thus alludes to the Duke of Bruns-1
wick, fitter of her present Majesty:

" 111 had it seem'd thy silver hair,
Toe last the bitterest pang to share ;
For princedoms reft and scutcheons riven,
And birthrights to usurpers given,
Thy lands, thy children's wrongs to feel,
And witness woes thou could'st not heal ;
And when revolves, in time's sure change,
The hour of Germany's revenge,
When breathing fury for her sake,
Some rew Artnkius shall awake,
The hero, ere he strike, shall come,
And whet his sxord on Mit' Ni% SC ieS tomb
He then read an estract from the late letter of her
Majesty to the King, which speaks of the peculiar
severity with which she has been treated. He main-
tained that her Majesty had done acts for which anti•
other woman than herself would have been highly
extolled. She was taunted with having instituted an
Order, though had any other woman done so, it
would, under the circumstances, have been considered
as an act of the greatest devotion—(Applause). , She
had opened the prison doors to the debtors at Athens,
and released the English captives she found at Tunis.
It was the misfortune of her Majesty, that her very
best acts were construed into climes. Upon this
subject he found a most apposite quotation in The
Abbot, a work lately published. It was as follows, and
referred to the case of Mary Queen of Scots:

" Thou knowrst, my friend, whether to make those who
have served me happy, was not ever Mary's favourite pastime.
When I have hen rebuked by the stern preaching of the Calvi-
nistic heresy, when I have seen the fierce countenances of my
Noblts averted from me, has it not been because I mixed is the
harmless pleasur.s of the young and gay, and rather far the sake
of their happinesa than my own, have mingled in the masque,
the song, or the dancv, with the youth of my household
! 1 repent not of it, though Knox termed it sin, and Mor-
ton degradation. I was happy, breath: I saw haplliness around
me, and woe bt tide the wretched jealousy that eau extract guilt
out of the overflowings of an unguarded platy !"
After some further observation, is vindieati.m o
her Nlaivsty, the worth) Gentleman concluded, and
the lies ,itaion, were all carried in the affirmative.

Nis-. Um:turn E then read the Address, and it
pledged themselves to become a guard for her Ma-
jesty, ii necessary, and that a million of swords would
ft from their scabbards in her jefence. &c. &c. &c.

Mr. Peacock, in seconding the Aliress, did not
wonder that, while the Addressers in all parts of the
kingdom talked to he, Majesty of her father, her
bi other, and others of net. family whom she had lost,
she, in her A nsv. els, or:Iv talked of Russell and
Hampden, .c .f Bruce :md Wallace; because she well
knew, that airy of those names e: ere more dear to the
friends of Liberty than the %thole race of Brunswick
laugh, and applause).
Mr. PEARSON' was glad to see (as Lord Castle-
reagh would call it) the " amiable dAusion" of the
Ward of BishopigAte on the occasion—(Langhter).—
Tha People cf England ought, he thought„ now to
shcw the Ministers their detern:ination to assert their
own rights, while they did justice to the calumniated
character oftheir Queen. He expressed the pleasure
he felt at the abandonment of this Bill, for he was
convinced that had the matter gone on, it would
have led to an open conflict between the People and
the Ministers. It was well that such zi struggle had
not been pressed', for he should rather see the liber-
ties of the country restored by a less violent process
( Hear, hear!).—lie thervalludea to the proceeding,
which had taken place in the House of Lords. He
disliked crying philosophers, and their solemn pledges
of their consc►ences for their veracity ; he feared, In-
deed, they were too heavily mortgaged to be worth ,
much for the equity of redemption !—(Laughter and
applause). He then animadverted with much seve-
r►ty upon the proceedings lately carried on in the
House of Lords, and said that her Majesty was de-
prived by the mode adopted of all the benefit of chal
lenging her jurors. S:►e would have had many pe-
remptory challenges, and whatever number besides
s►he could shew cause for. The relatives of the ac-
cuser would be declared improper jurors; his ser-
vants, dependants, and pensioners would-also have to
quit the jury-box. If these interested parties had been
struck out of the list of those who had voted for the
Bill, what would become of the remainder? (Hear.)
Besides, jurors should always be on oath—the Peers
were only upon honour, and, as Hudibras said, ,

" }lonour's like a glassy bubble, .
" That costs philosophers much trouble,
" The least that cracks, the whole doth 9y,
" Aud wits are crack'd to find out why !"

Ile then reviewed the conduct of the Milan Commis.
sign. and censured it in terms of the strongest indig..
nation. Nothing couti.l be more singular than the
selection of persons fur that Commission. 'Mr. Cook
was appointed to examine witnesses, without under-
standing a word in the Italian, German, or French
languages. He appointed Vilmacarti to prepare the
depositions, who, in his turn, knew nothing of Eng-
lish !_(illi:ch laughter.)—He then observed, that, in
i their congratulations upon this occasion, they ought
not to overlook the strong claims of Lady Anne Ha-
milton, whose steady attachment to her Royal Mis-
tress, under her persecutions, be warmly eulogised.

He concluded by proposing a vote of thanks toLacly
Anne Hamilton, which was carried by acclamation.
Mr. LICHAITRE then proposed an Address to the
King; but it was withdrawn, at 'the desire of several
Gentlemen, who thought irony inapplicable to;the
subject, and who inferred, from the form of the Ad-
dress, that nothing seriolts was intended.
After passing some Resolutions of form, the Meet-
ing adjourned.