Obrazy na stronie
PDF
ePub

MINUTE OF THE CABINET, JAN. 25, 1807. :

[blocks in formation]

Your Majesty's Confidential Servants have given the most diligent and attentive consideration to the matters on which your Majesty has been pleased to require their opinion and advice. They trust your Majesty will not think that any apology is necessary on their part for the delay which has attended their deliberations, on a subject or such extreme importance, and which they have found to be of the greatest difficulty and embarrassment.

They are fully convinced that it never can have been your Majesty's intention to require from them, that they should lay before your Majesty a detailed and circumstantial examination and discussion of the various arguments and allegations contained in the letter submitted to your Majesty, by the Law Advisers of the Princess of Wales. And they beg leave, with all humility, to represent to your Majesty that the Laws and Constitution of their country have not placed them in a situation in which

they can conclusively pronounce on any question of guilt or innocence affecting any of your Majesty's subjects, much less one of your Majesty's Royal Family. They have, indeed, no power or authority whatever to enter on such a course of inquiry as could alone lead to any final results of such a nature.

The main question on which they had conceived themselves called upon by their duty to submit theiradvice to your Majesty was this: Whether the circumstances which had, by your Majesty's commands, been brought before them, were of a nature to induce your Majesty to order any farther steps to be taken upon them by your Majesty's Government? And on this point they humbly submit to your Majesty, that the advice which they offered was clear and unequivocal. Your Majesty has since been pleased further to require, that they should submit to your Majesty their opinions as to the answer to be given by your Majesty to the request contained in the Princess's letter, and as to the manner in which that answer should be communicated to her Royal Highness.

They have, therefore, in dutiful obedience to your Majesty's commands, proceeded to reconsider the whole of the subject, in this new view of it; and after much deliberation, they have agreed humbly to recommend to your Majesty, the draft of a Message, which if approved by your Majesty, they would humbly suggest your Majesty might send to her Royal Highness through the Lord Chancellor.

Having before humbly solicited to your Majesty their opinion, that the facts of case did not warrant their advising that any further steps should be taken

upon it by your Majesty's Government, they have not thought it necessary to advise your Majesty any longer to decline receiving the Princess into your Royal presence. But the result of the whole case does, in their judgment, render it indispensabie that your Majosty should, by a serious admonition, convey to her Royal Highness your Majesty's expectation that her Royal Highness should be more circumspect in her future conduct; and they trust that in the terms in which they have advised, that such admonition should be conveyed, your Majesty will not be of opinion, on a full consideration of the evidence and answer, that they can be considered as having at all exceeded the necessity of the case, as arising out of the last reference which your Majesty has been pleased to make to them.

THE Lord Chancellor has the honour to present his most humble duty to the Princess of Wales, and to transmit to her Royal Highness the accompanying Message from the King; which Her Royal Highness will observe, he has his Majesty's commands to communicate to her Royal Highness.

The Lord Chancellor would have done himself the honour to have waited personally upon Her Royal Highness, and have delivered it himself; but he considered the sending it sealed, as more respectful and acceptable to her Royal Highness. The Lord Chancellor received the original paper from the King yesterday, and made the copy now sent in his own hand.

January Twenty-eighth, 1807.

To Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales.

THE King having referred to his confidential Servants the proceeding and papers relative to the written declarations, which had been before His Majesty, respecting the conduct of the Princess of Wales, has been apprised by them, that, after the fullest consideration of the examinations taken on the subject, and of the observations and affidavits brought forward by the Princess of Wales's legal sdvisers, they agree in the opinions, submitted to His Majesty in the original Report of the four Lords, by whom His Majesty directed that the matter should in the first instance be inquired into; and that, in the present stage of the business, upon a mature and deliberate view of this most important subject in all its parts, and bearings, it is their opinion, that the facts of this case do not warrant their advising that further step should be taken in the business by his Majesty's Government, or any other proceedings instituted upon it, except such only as His Majesty's Law Servants may, on reference to them, think fit to rncommend, for the prosecution of Lady Douglas, on those parts of her depositions which may appear to them to be justly liable thereto.

any

In this situation, His Majesty is advised, that it is no longer necessary for him to decline receiving the Princess into His Royal Presence.

The King sees, with great satisfaction, the agreement of his confidential servants, in the decided opinion expressed by the four Lords, upon the falsehood of the accusations of pregnancy and deD d

livery, brought forward against the Princess by Lady Douglas.

[ocr errors]

On the other matters produced in the course of the Inquiry, the King is advised that none of the facts or allegations stated in preliminary examinations, carried on in the absence of the parties interested, can be considered as legally, or conclusively, established. But in those examinations, and even in the answer drawn in the name of the Princess by her legal advisers, there have appeared circumstances of conduct on the part of the Princess, which his Majesty never could regard but with serious concern. The elevated rank which the Princess holds in this country, and the relation in which she stands to his Majesty and the Royal Family, must always deeply involve both the interests of the state, and the personal feelings of His Majesty, in the propriety aud correctness of her conduct. And his Majesty cannot therefore forbear to express in the conclusion of the business, his desire and expectation, that such a conduct may in future be observed by the Princess, as may fully justify those marks of paternal regard and affection, which the King always wishes to shew to every part of His Royal Family.

His Majesty has directed that this message should be transmitted to the Princess of Wales, by his Lord Chancellor, and that copies of the proceedings, which had taken place on the subject, should also be communicated to his dearly beloved Son the Prince of Wales.

« PoprzedniaDalej »