HER MAJESTY'S MOST GRACIOUS ANSWER TO THE ADDRESS PRESENTED BY THE CITIZENS AND INHABI TANTS OF ROCHESTER. "This loyal, warm, and ingenuous address, entitles the citizens and inhabitants of Rochester to my most cordial thanks. When they make my return to these realms the topic of congratulation, and my former departure from England the subject of regret, their joy and their sorrow are mingled with my own. 66 The affectionate manner in which the citizens and inhabitants of Rochester mention my two deceased, most dear, and most lamented relatives, powerfully touches every chord of sensibility in my breast. I still mourn over their graves-but not as one without hope. That beloved daughter, of whom I have been bereaved, was once my exhilarating delight, and his late revered Majesty my unalterable trust. Had their lives been happily protracted, I should not now have to contend against that malice, and those calumnies, by which I am so rancorously assailed. My constitutional rights are, at present, attacked in an unconstitutional manner. If, in this country, the life, the property, and the reputation of the most humble individual are safe within the sanctuary of the laws, surely those laws ought not to be violated on purpose to deprive the Queen of her rank, her title, and her truly legitimate rights. "If as a subject, I am answerable to the laws, let those laws be sacredly observed in the judicial investigation of my conduct. Let me not, by any proceeding-which, if it retains the form of justice, is conceived in the spirit of tyranny-be put at once out of the protecting pale of the law, and the tutelary guardianship of the constitution." N "I have no wish,-I can have no wish,-to leave this enlightened, this hospitable country. In what other part of the world could I find, or expect to find, a people so affectionate, friends so steady, or a home in which I have so little to fear from the machinations of my enemies?" HER MAJESTY'S MOST GRACIOUS ANSWER TO THE ADDRESS OF THE INHABITANTS OF MORPETH, IN THE COUNTY OF NORTHUMBERLND. "I am unfeignedly obliged to the worthy inhabitants of the town of Morpeth, and its viciuity, for their loyal and affectionate address, and particularly for their condolence upon those severe domestic losses which have often agonized my heart. I no sooner set my foot on the British shore, after my long absence, than I felt that I was respiring the air of freedom, and was in the midst of a generous people, amongst whom, the persecuted and oppressed can never want a friend. Their sublime sentiments, and their virtuous sympathies, were instantly excited in favour of an injured Queen. From the south to the north, from one extremity of the kingdom to the other, the spark of enthusiastic loyalty has been kindled in every breast. If the age of chivalry were ever past, I have lived to see it revived anew. "I humbly solicit, and boldly challenge, any open, any legal investigation; and the more my character is investigated, the more, I trust, it will be found to be intimately embodied with the principles of rectitude. I wish for life, only to make others feel it is a blessing to live. "I consider my rights and privileges, as Queen-Consort of the Sovereign, to be a part of the sacred patrimony of the British nation; and I will defend them with intrepid con stancy for their benefit, rather than for my own personal gratification. The rights and liberties of the people, are the best safeguard of the Sovereign, and while I live, I shall pray for their everlasting preservation." HER MAJESTY'S MOST GRACIOUS ANSWER TO THE ADDRESS OF THE INHABITANTS OF WAKEFIELD AND ITS VICINITY. "I receive with heartfelt satisfaction, this loyal and affectionate Address from his Majesty's subjects, inhabitants of the town of Wakefield, and its vicinity. Their sentiments of congratulation on my accession to the high dignity of Queen of these realms, are a proof that their minds have not been unduly influenced by the flagitious calumnies of my persecutors; and I am, at the same time, feelingly alive to their expressions of kind condolence upon the melancholy losses of those near and dear relatives, which I experienced while on the Continent. "I am sensible of the indignities with which I have beeu assailed, not so much because they are disrespectful to myself, as because they are insulting to the nation; for the nation has been insulted in the late outrages upon the characer of its lawful Queen. Though I am attacked by that malice, which hesitates at no falsehood, and by an assumption of power, which seems to spurn all limitation, I feel a cheering confidence of present support, and of eventual triumph in the affections of the people. “I have been accused of appealing to popular clamourbut I appeal to nothing but to the good sense and good feeling---to the reason---the morality and the patriotism of the most enlightened and most respectable portion of the community. If I am condemned without justice, and dethroned against all law, the liberties of every individual will receive a fatal stab; and the character of the highest Judicature will be blasted to the latest posterity. 66 My own personal welfare is of little moment; but I do feel as a Queen for the public welfare, which is deeply implicated in the vindication of my violated rights. "The power which the House of Lords are assuming in their Bill of Pains and Penalties, not only of divorcing his Majesty's Royal Consort, but of dethroning their lawful Queen, may prove in the result productive of an age of misery to the nation. The child that is now at the breast, may live to rue its consequences. "The consciousness of rectitude, of which no Bills of Pains and Penalties can ever deprive me, will support me through all trials; and even though the force of my enemies should, in the end, prove commensurate with their malignity, the people shall never have occasion to reproach me with neglecting their happiness, with betraying their rights, or with relinquishing, for one moment, the patriotic magnanimity of the Queen." HER MAJESTY'S MOST GRACIOUS ANSWER TO THE ADDRESS OF THE INHABITANTS OF ILCHESTER. "I return my grateful thanks to the inhabitants of the borough of Ilchester and its vicinity, for an address in which so much affection is manifested for my person, so much zeal for my rights, and so much sympathy for my sufferings. "My late beloved daughter well knew her mother's injuries; and her noble nature made them her own. Over her untimely end, if I wept as a parent, the whole nation mourned like an individual. The grief was one and the same in all. Every man felt as if he had lost a friendand that friend his solace in the passing day, and his hope in the time that was to come. "When I call to mind the form of his late Majesty, oppressed with afflictions, and bending with age, I ought not, perhaps, to lament over that event which put an end to his sufferings, and made him exchange his earthly crown for a crown more permanent. But my gratitude will not suffer me to forget that his Majesty was my protector in adversity and my heart, still sorrowing, tells me that that protector is no more. : "I should, even according to the confession of my accusers, have been guilty of no sin if I had never revisited this country; that was my great transgression, and that has been rendered more inexpiable by this circumstance—that I no sooner came than the affections of the people all circled round their Queen. "If to possess the affections of the people be a proof of guilt, how can I ever show that I am innocent? Could I prevent, or was I to try to prevent, the stream of popular sympathy from running forcibly in favour of Majesty insulted, and of integrity reviled? If the nation could have contemplated the many wrongs I have experienced, and the greater wrongs with which I am threatened, with silent indifference or with sluggish apathy, it would not have been composed of men and women; it would have been constituted of beings without sensibility or intelligence. But the British people are made of better materials. No nation has more right reason or more good feeling; and this is a truth of which I can never be unconscious as long as one particle of life is streaming in my veins." BARNARD AND FARLEY, THE END. |