the Prince Regent.

Montague-house, Jan. 14, 1813. "SIR, It is with great reluctance that I presume to obtrude myself up. on your royal highness, and to solicit your attention to matters which may, at first, appear rather of a personal than a public nature. If I could think them so if they related merely to myself I should abstain from a proceeding which might give uneasiness, or interrupt the more weighty occupations of your royal highness's time. I should continue, in silence and retirement, to lead the life which has been prescribed to me, and console myself for the loss of that society and those domestic comforts to which I have so long been a stranger, by the reflection that it has been deemed proper I should be afflicted without any fault of my own-and that your royal highness knows.

"But, sir, there are considerations of a higher nature than any regard to my own happiness, which render this address a duty both to myself and my daughter. May I venture to say-a duty also to my husband, and the people committed to his care? There is a point beyond which a guiltless woman cannot with safety carry her forbearance. If her honour is invaded,

longer a matter of choice, and it signifies not whether the attack be made openly, manfully, and directly; or by secret insinuation, and by holding such conduct towards her as countenances all the suspicions that malice can suggest. If these ought to be the feelings of every woman in England who is conscious that she deserves no reproach, your royal highness has too sound a judgment, and too nice a sense of honour, not to perceive, how much more justly they belong to the mother of your daughter-the mother of her who is destined, I trust at a very distant period, to reign over the British empire.

"It may be known to your royal highness, that during the continuance of the restrictions upon your royal au thority, I purposely refrained from making any representations which might then augment the painful diffi. culties of your exalted station. At the expiration of the restrictions, I still was inclined to delay taking this step, in the hope that I might owe the redress I sought to your gracious and unsolicited condescension. I have waited, in the fond indulgence of this expectation, until, to my inexpressible mortification, I find that my unwillingness to complain has only produced fresh grounds of complaint; and I am

at length compelled, either to abandon all regard for the two dearest objects which I possess on earth, mine own honour, and my beloved child, or to throw myself at the feet of your royal highness, the natural protector of both. "I presume, sir, to represent to your royal highness, that the separation, which every succeeding month is making wider, of the mother and the daughter, is equally injurious to my character and to her education. I say nothing of the deep wounds which so cruel an arrangement inflicts upon my feelings, although I would fain hope that few persons will be found of a disposition to think lightly of these. To see myself cut off from one of the few domestic enjoyments left me certainly the only one upon which I set any value, the society of my child-involves me in such misery, as I well know your royal highness could never inflict upon me if you were aware of its bitterness. Our intercourse has been gradually diminished. A single interview, weekly, seemed sufficiently hard allowance for a mother's affections. That, however, was reduced to our meeting once a fortnight; and I now learn that even this most rigorous interdiction is to be still more rigidly enforced.

"But while I do not venture to intrude my feelings as a mother upon your royal highness's notice, I must be allowed to say, that in the eyes of an observing and jealous world, this separation of a daughter from her mother, will only admit of one construction-a construction fatal to the mother's reputation. Your royal highness will also pardon me for adding, that there is no less inconsistency than injustice in this treatment. He who dares advise your royal highness to overlook the evidence of my innocence, and disregard the sentence of complete acquittal which it produced, or is wicked and false enough still to

whisper suspicions in your ear, betrays his duty to you, sir, to your daughter, and to your people, if he counsels you to permit a day to pass without a further investigation of my conduct. 1 know that no such calumniator will venture to recommend a measure which must speedily end in his utter confusion. Then let me implore you to reflect on the situation in which I am placed: without the shadow of a charge against me-without even an accuser after an enquiry that led to my ample vindication—yet treat. ed as if I were still more culpable than the perjuries of my suborned traducere represented me, and held up to the world as a mother who may not enjoy the society of her only child.

"The feelings, sir, which are natu ral to my unexampled situation, might justify me in the gracious judgment of your royal highness, had I no other motives for addressing you but such as relate to myself. But I will not disguise from your royal highness what I cannot for a moment conceal from myself, that the serious, and it soon may be, the irreparable injury which my daughter sustains from the plan at present pursued, has done more in overcoming my reluctance to in trude upon your royal highness, than any sufferings of my own could ac complish; and if for her sake I pre sume to call away your royal high ness's attention from the other cares of your exalted station, I feel confi. dent I am not claiming it for a matter of inferior importance either to your. self or your people.

"The powers with which the con stitution of these realms vests your royal highness in the regulation of the royal family, I know, because I am so advised, are ample, and unquestion able. My appeal, sir, is made to your excellent sense and liberality of mind in the exercise of those powers; I willingly hope that your own pa

rental feelings will lead you to excuse the anxiety of mine for impelling me to represent the unhappy consequences which the present system must entail upon our beloved child.

"It is impossible, sir, that any one can have attempted to persuade your royal highness, that her character will not be injured by the perpetual violence offered to her strongest affections the studied care taken to estrange her from my society, and even to interrupt all communication be tween us! That her love for me, with whom, by his majesty's wise and gra cious arrangements, she passed the years of her infancy and childhood, never can be extinguished, I well know, and the knowledge of it forms the greatest blessing of my existence. "But let me implore your royal highness to reflect how inevitably all attempts to abate this attachment, by forcibly separating us, if they succeed, must injure my child's principles-if they fail, must destroy her happiness. "The plan of excluding my daughter from all intercourse with the world, appears to my humble judgment peculiarly unfortunate. She who is destined to be the sovereign of this great country, enjoys none of those advantages of society which are deemed necessary for imparting a knowledge of mankind to persons who have infinitely less occasion to learn that important lesson; and it may so happen, by a chance which I trust is very remote, that she should be called upon to exercise the powers of the crown, with an experience of the world more confined than that of the most private individual. To the extraordinary talents with which she is blessed, and which accompany a disposition as singularly amiable, frank, and decided, I willingly trust much; but beyond a certain point the greatest natural endowments cannot struggle against the disadvantages of circumstances and si

tuation. It is my earnest prayer, for her own sake, as well as her country's, that your royal highness may be induced to pause before this point be reached.

"Those who have advised you, sir, to delay so long the period of my daughter's commencing her intercourse with the world, and for that purpose to make Windsor her residence, appear not to have regarded the interruptions to her education which this arrangement occasions; both by the impossibility of obtaining the attendance of proper teachers, and the time unavoidably consumed in the frequent journeys to town which she must make, unless she is to be secluded from all intercourse even with your royal hignness and the rest of the royal family. To the same unfortunate counsels I ascribe a circumstance in every way so distressing both to my parental and religious feelings, that my daughter has never yet enjoyed the benefit of confirmation, although above a year older than the age at which all the other branches of the royal family have partaken of that solemnity. May I earnestly conjure you, sir, to hear my entreaties upon this serious matter, even if you should listen to other advisers on things of less near concernment to the welfare of our child?

"The pain with which I have at length formed the resolution of addressing myself to your royal highness is such as I should in vain attempt to express. express. If I could adequately describe it, you might be enabled, sir, to estimate the strength of the motives which have made me submit to it. They are the most powerful feel. ings of affection, and the deepest impressions of duty towards your royal highness, my beloved child, and the country, which I devotedly hope she may be preserved to govern, and to show, by a new example, the liberal affection of a free and generous people

to a virtuous and constitutional monarch.

"I am, sir, with profound respect, and an attachment which nothing can alter,

Your royal highness's most devoted and most affectionate

Consort, cousin, and subject, (Signed) CAROLINE LOUISA."

A copy of the report of the honourable the privy council, having been laid before the prince regent, was transmitted to her royal highness by Viscount Sidmouth on the evening of the day on which the above letter was sent; and Lord Harrowby replied to her royal highness, by letter, to this effect:

The report is as follows:To his royal highness the prince regent. The members of his majesty's most honourable privy council: viz.-his grace the archbishop of Canterbury, &c. &c.; having been summoned by command of your royal highness, on the 19th of February, to meet at the office of Viscount Sidmouth, secretary of state for the home department, a communication was made by his lordship to the lords then present, in the following terms:

"My Lords,-I have it in command from his Royal Highness the Prince Regent, to acquaint your lordships, that a copy of a letter from the Princess of Wales to the Prince Regent having appeared in a public paper, which letter refers to the proceedings that took place in an enquiry instituted by command of his majesty, in the year 1806, and contains, among other matters, certain animadversions upon the manner in which the Prince Regent has exercised his undoubted right of regulating the conduct and education of his daughter the Princess Charlotte; and his royal highness having taken into his consideration the said

letter so published, and adverting to the directions heretofore given by his majesty, that the documents relating to the said enquiry should be sealed up, and deposited in the office of his majesty's principal secretary of state, in order that his majesty's government should possess the means of resorting to them if necessary: his royal highness has been pleased to direct, that the said letter of the Princess of Wales, and the whole of the said documents, together with the copies of other letters and papers, of which a schedule is annexed, should be referred to your lordships, being members of his majesty's most honourable privy council, for your consideration: and that you should report to his royal highness your opinion, whether, under all the circumstances of the case, it be fit and proper that the intercourse between the Princess of Wales, and her daugh. ter the Princess Charlotte, should continue to be subject to regulations and restrictions."

Their lordships adjourned their meetings to Tuesday, the 23d of Fe bruary; and the intermediate days having been employed in perusing the documents referred to them, by command of your royal highness, they proceeded on that and the following day to the farther consideration of the said documents, and have agreed to report to your royal highness as follows:

"In obedience to the commands of your royal highness, we have taken into our most serious consideration the

letter from her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales to your royal highness, which has appeared in the public papers, and has been referred to us by your royal highness, in which letter the Princess of Wales, amongst other matters, complains that the intercourse between her royal highness, and her Royal Highness the Princess Charlotte, has been subjected to certain restrictions.

"We have also taken into our most serious consideration, together with the other papers referred to us by your royal highness, all the documents relative to the enquiry instituted in 1806, by command of his majesty, into the truth of certain representations, respecting the conduct of her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales, which appear to have been pressed upon the attention of your royal highness, in consequence of the advice of Lord Thurlow, and upon grounds of public duty; by whom they were transmitted to his majesty's consideration; and your royal highness having been graciously pleased to command us to report our opinions to your royal highness, whether, under all the circumstances of the case, it be fit and proper that the intercourse between the Princess of Wales and her daughter, the Princess Charlotte, should continue to be subject to regulation and restraint:

"We beg leave humbly to report to your royal highness, that after a full examination of all the documents before us, we are of opinion, that under all the circumstances of the case, it is highly fit and proper, with a view to the welfare of her Royal Highness the Princess Charlotte, in which are equally involved the happiness of your royal highness, in your parental and royal character, and the most important interests of the state, that the intercourse between her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales, and her Royal Highness the Princess Charlotte, should continue to be subject to regulation and restraint.

by a statement under the hand of her majesty the queen, that your royal highness has conformed in this respect to the declared will of his majesty ; who has been pleased to direct, that such ceremony should not take place till her royal highness should have completed her eighteenth year.

"We also humbly trust that we may be further permitted to notice some expressions in the letter of her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales, which may possibly be construed as implying a charge of too serious a nature to be passed over without observation. We refer to the words-“ suborned traducers." As this expression, from the manner it is introduced, may, perhaps, be liable to misconstruction (however impossible it may be to suppose that it can have been so intended) to have reference to some part of the conduct of your royal highness, we feel it our bounden duty not to omit this opportunity of declaring, that the documents laid before us afford the most ample proof, that there is not the slightest foundation for such an aspersión.

A true copy,

MELVILLE, SIDMOUTH, J. LONDON, ELLENBOROUGH, CHAS. ABBOT, N. VANSittart, C. BATHURST, W. Grant, A. MACDONALD, W. SCOTT, J. NICHOL, Sidmouth."

Copy of the Report of the Commis

sioners.

May it please your Majesty, Your majesty having been gracious. pleased, by an instrument under