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week would not have passed, without my having received that satisfaction. I therefore determined to wait in patience, without further intrusion upon Your Majesty, till I might have the opportunity of guarding myself from the possibility of being misunderstood, by personally explaining to Your Majesty, that, whatever observations I had to make upon the paper so communicated to me, on the 28th ultimo, and whatever complaints respecting the delay, and the many cruel circumstances which had attended the whole of the proceedings against me, and the unsatisfactory state, in which they were at length left by that last communication, they were observations and complaints which affected those only, under whose advice Your Majesty had acted, and were not, in any degree, intended to intimate even the most distant insinuation against Your Majesty's justice or kindness.

That paper established the opinion, which I certainly, had ever confidently entertained, but the justness of which I had not before any document to establish, that Your Majesty had, from the first, deemed this proceeding a high and important matter of state, in the consideration of which Your Majesty had not felt yourself at liberty to trust to your own generous feelings, and to your own Royal, and gracious judgment. I never did believe, that the cruel state of anxiety, in which I had been kept, ever since the delivery of my Answer, (for at least sixteen weeks) could be at all attributable to Your Majesty; it was most unlike every thing which I had ever experienced from Your Majesty's conde

scension, feeling, and justice; and I found, from that Paper, that it was to your confidential servants I was to ascribe the length of banishment from your presence, which they, at last, advised Your Majesty, it was no longer necessary should be continued. I perceive, therefore, what I always believed, that it was to them, and to them only, that . I owed the protracted continuance of my sufferings, and of my disgrace; and that Your Majesty, considering the whole of this proceeding to have been instituted and conducted, under the grave responsibility of Your Majesty's servants, had not thought proper to take any step, or express any opinion, upon any part of it, but such as was recommended by their advice. Influenced by these sentiments, and anxious to have the opportunity of conveying them, with the overflowings of a grateful heart, to Your Majesty, what were my sensations of surprise. mortification, and disappointment, on the receipt of Your Majesty's letter of the 10th instant, Your Majesty may conceive, though I am utterly unable

to express.

That Letter announces to me, that his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, upon receiving the several documents which your Majesty directed your Cabinet to transmit to him, made a personal communication to your Majesty of his intention to put them into the hands of his Lawyers, accompanied by a request, that your Majesty would suspend any further steps in the business, until the Prince of Wales should be enabled to submit to your Majesty

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the statement which he proposed to make; and it also announces to me that your Majesty therefore considered it incumbent on you, to defer naming a day to me, until the further result of the Prince of Wales's intention should have been made known to your Majesty.

This determination of your Majesty, on this request, made by his Royal Highness, I humbly trust your Majesty will permit me to entreat you, in your most gracious justice, to reconsider. Your Majesty, I am convinced, must have been surprised at the time, and prevailed upon by the importunity of the Prince of Wales, to think this determination necessary, or your Majesty's generosity and justice. would never have adopted it. And if I can satisfy your Majesty of the unparalleled injustice, and cruelty of this interposition of the Prince of Wales, at such a time, and under such circumstances, I feel the most perfect confidence that your Majesty will hasten to recall it.

I should basely be wanting to my own interest and feelings, if I did not plainly state my sense of that injustice, and cruelty; and if I did not most loudly complain of it. Your Majesty will better perceive the just grounds of my complaint, when I retrace the course of these proceedings from their

commencement.

The four noble Lords, appointed by your Majesty to inquire into the charges brought against me, in their Report of the 14th of July last, after having stated that His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales

had had laid before him, the charge which was made against me by Lady Douglas, and the declaration in support of it, proceed in the following manner.

*"In the painful situation in which his Royal "Highness was placed by these communications,

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we learnt that His Royal Highness had adopted "the only course which could, in our judgment; "with propriety be followed. When informations ❝such as these had been thus confidently alleged, "and particularly detailed, and had been in some "degree supported by collateral evidence, applying "to other facts of the same nature, (though going to a far less extent,) one line only could be pur ❝sued.

"Every sentiment of duty to your Majesty, and "of concern for the public welfare, required that "these particulars should not be withheld from 66 your Majesty, to whom more particularly be

longed the cognizance of a matter of State, so "nearly touching the honour of your Majesty's "Royal Family, and, by possibility, affecting the "succession of your Majesty's Crown.

"Your Majesty had been pleased, on your part, "to view the subject in the same light. Consider

ing it as a matter which, on every account, de"manded the most immediate investigation, your "Majesty had thought fit to commit into our hands "the duty of ascertaining, in the first instance, "what degree of credit was due to the information, "and thereby enabling your Majesty to decide "what further conduct to adopt respecting them."

*Report, p. 6. ante.

His Royal Highness then, pursuing, as the four Lords say, the only course, which could in their judgment, with propriety, be pursued, submitted the matter to your Majesty.-Your Majesty directed the Inquiry by the four noble Lords.-The four Lords in their Report upon the case, justly acquitted me of all crime, and expressed (I will not wait now to say how unjustly) the credit which they gave, and the consequence they ascribed to other matters, which they did not, however, characterize as amounting to any crime.-To this Report I made my answer. That answer, together with the whole proceedings, was referred by your Majesty, to the same four noble Lords, and others of your Majesty's confidential servants. They advised your Majesty, amongst much other matter, (which must be the subject of further observations) that there was no longer any reason why you should decline receiving me.

Your Majesty will necessarily conceive that I have always looked upon my banishment from your Royal Presence, as, in fact, a punishment, and a severe one too. I thought it sufficiently hard, that I should have been suffering that punishment, during the time that this Inquiry has been pending, while I was yet only under accusation, and upon the principles of the just laws of your Majesty's kingdom, entitled to be presumed to be innocent, till. I was proved to be guilty. But I find this does not appear to be enough, in the opinion of the Prince of Wales. For now, when

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