ther drunk or sober. I was most agreeably surprized to see your lordship bring forward any observation of mine to corroborate your assertions with respect to the press, because it has ever been my object to write in such a stile, that the full and unambiguous force of it might be felt where it was applied. I claim it as a proof of the veracity of my assertions, that your lordship has noticed them in that House. It is the truth only which your lordship and your colleagues are alarmed at, we may fill our pages with falsehood as long as we can hold a pen, and we should then find your lordship applaud what you call the well regulated mind which sways the press. According to your idiom, that is the well regulated mind which supports the abuses and corruptions amidst which you thrive and flourish, and agreeable to that idiom, to write the truth and exposé those abuses and corruptions, is licentiousness. However, for my own part, being now convinced, that what I have lately written has reached and wrung your lordship's feelings, I shall find encouragement to pursue the same line, for to me your lordship's observations are a sufficient satisfaction, that I have "hit the right nail," and that I have not been altogether useless in endeavouring to oppose your wishes, to destroy the Queen. I now beg leave to say, or rather repeat, that I have not espoused her cause as the Queen of England, it is sufficient for me that I see her a persecuted woman, and that I know her persecutor or persecutors to be most abandoned villains-wretches in the human form-knaves and scoundrels among whom to be virtuous is to be offensive, and to incur wrath and punishment.

I cannot help giving it to your lordship as my calm opinion, that you evince the badness of your cause, in endeavouring to cover such a paragraph as appeared in Flyndell's Western Luminary, and to protect its author from the punishment which commonly awaits a notice of that kind in the House of Commons. It is a maxim in all our courts of law, that a man shall not plead the similar conduct of others as a justification for his own offence; but this maxim has lately, on many occasions, been controverted in the House of Commons; but in no instance so glaring as that in which your lordship has been a particeps criminis. What a wide difference do the opposite paragraphs display, when contrasted with each other. The paragraph which your lordship supported, and screened its author from punishment, was a false and direful attack, to those who might not have the opportunity of knowing it to he

a falsehood, on a persecuted woman; on a woman in danger of her life; and what is still worse, her honour and chastity; on a woman against whom the malice and influence of the monarch and all his adherents are called into exercise; on a woman who has been prejudged by her judges, and who is to be tried by her accusers. If your lordship had been anxious, as you have falsely asserted, that the Queen should have fair play, you would have seconded the motion of Mr. Wetherell, and left the other paragraphs to the attention of the AttorneyGeneral; but by shielding Mr. Flyndell, on the ground that on the other side there had appeared paragraphs as bad, was a conduct as puerile as it was base. For my own part, my lord, I can say it was to me a matter of regret that you did not put in the numbers of the Republican for the animadversion of the House. I began to read the proceedings with an indescribable joy, but it relapsed into sorrow when I found how it ended. I do not consider that Mr. Wetherell did his duty fully and fairly, to withdraw his motion, and I do not thank him for keeping me from the bar of the House. I would have supported my assertions in your lordship's face, and the face of the House; you should have seen that my contempt was somewhat more than arm's length for your honourable House: it is rooted in my bosom; and my tongue should have corresponded with my pen, whatever had been the consequence. I would have shewn you, that that which is in itself dishonourable and corrupt, should not have found the slightest mark of respect emanating from me in any place or character. It was and is a matter of regret to me, that I was deprived of the honor of being brought to the bar of that House by Mr. Wetherell's flinching from inflicting a summary punishment on that barbarous and murderous paragraph in the Exeter Luminary. Such a paragraph is only calculated to injure her Majesty in the minds of those who read no other paper, which is too much the case in the four western counties of England. In London and many other parts of the country, such a paragraph could only be beneficial to the cause of the Queen, and your lordship's support of it is the best proof of the foulness of your cause. As such paragraphs and proceedings ought to be recorded in every publication that issues from the press, I shall combine them in this letter to your lordship, which I think you will not complain of as inappropriate, as they were the cause of the letter. The first is, that which your lordship cherished as a delicious morsel on your side, it is as follows, alluding to the Queen:- Shall a woman who

is as notoriously devoted to Bacchus as to Venus-shall such a woman as would, if found on our pavement, be committed to Bridewell and whipped-be held up in the light of suffering innocence?" Here my lord stands a momento of what sort of fair play your lordship wishes to shew the Queen. The fair play your lordship means, is such as you have witnessed, and ordered, in Ireland; to flog the bowels of a man to make him confess what he knew nothing about, and then let him lay for weeks half putrid, without medical aid. Your lordship has no idea what humanity is, and the only office that you bear qualifications for, is the master of a slave ship. Let us now see what are the paragraphs adduced as a justification of the above: the first is from the Examiner of the 23rd July, as follows:-"This is what a true Commons House would have done; but when that House, for the main part, is composed of venal boroughmongers, grasping placemen, greedy adventurers, and aspiring title-hunters, or the representatives of such worthies, a body, in short containing a far greater portion of public criminals than public guardians-what can be expected from it, but--just what we have seen it so readily perform." Contrast this paragraph with the above, and say, what analogy is there between them as to the respective merits of the prosecution of the Queen: this last paragraph is a general one, applied to the well known hired and paid mercenaries which compose your lordship's majority in the lower House of Parliament: the former paragraph is an attack on an individual, and that individual a persecuted one, and consequently, whether innocent or guilty, is entitled to the peculiar protection of all but her accusers, and even those, if they are honest men. Let us see what the other paragraphs are, and how they bear on the question: the first is from No. 13 of the Republican as follows: "We have very little hopes that the Divorce Bill will be rejected in such a Parliament as the present, because we know, and have seen, that they are sufficiently profligate and servile to act against the clearest testimony of innocence and right. Still this will matter nothing; the King and Parliament must wipe off the disgrace which has so long hung about themselves, before they can disgrace the Queen in the public mind. The more she suffers, the more will she be endeared to the nation. There never was in England a monarch more suspected or despised, nor a Parliament more notoriously profligate, than at present. Was it not that they hold the purse strings of the nation, they would be kicked out of al

power in a few hours, and fairly swept out of the country. At present their doom is sealed, and the herald approaching with it." Now, my lord, what is there in this paragraph that bears any analogy to Mr. Flyndell's filthy article. I have attacked, I say I, because, although authors and editors are in the habit of degrading themselves to a level with kings in substituting the plural for the singular number, or we for I: still, although, I have occasionally used this absurd custom, and often because I could venture to speak in a higher tone and with more assurance than in the singular number, I never will be ashamed to avow any thing that my hand has committed to paper, and if your Lordship's Attorney-General thinks proper to prosecute me for any thing which comes from me, he shall have Mrs. Carlile, and every person in her employ, as evidence of my hand-writing and authorship, or I will save him the trouble by admitting it. Prosecutions for libels on church or state, are now a day rather to be desired than to be flinched from. It is become just what a transportation from England to New Holland is, a change for the better. I beg leave to tell your Lordship, that imprisonment, severe as is the nature of mine, is no punishment for me. I repeat that I have attacked the persecutors of the Queen, a party with power and all the power of the country, except what the public voice deprives them of; a set of usurpers whom I knew at the time had the power to crush me for writing what I did, and that merely by a private order: for those who superintend the management of this prison, are the men for any thing that your Lordship may wish them to do. If I have stated a falsehood in saying that the king and parliament are profligate, I am open to public contempt for the falsehood, and as I derive my daily bread from the will and pleasure of that public, and as those things which they purchase from me are not exactly essential to their support, I must stand or fall in proportion to the truth of my observations and the approbation they may carry with them. But I do say that the King and Parliament are profigate, and if Mr. Flyndell's observation had been applied to the King instead of the Queen it would have been as true as it is now false. As to the Parliament I cannot speak of what is called the present as I could of the last, but as I look at the majority of them to be one and the same for many years past, I durst say that they are extremely profligate, not only as members of parliament, but as private men, and if the Attorney-Gene

ral durst file an information against me for this letter, I will bring into the court some of the more decent members of the lower house of parliament, who shall say, that what was called the last parliament, was a disgusting scene of drunkenness and profligacy more so than any former one, that your Lordship's mercenaries would reel into the house at the smack of the whip for them to come and vote, as drunk, as to appear more like beasts than men. It is well known that these tools of your Lordship never attend to the debates of the house, but sit in the gin-shops and wine-vaults contiguous to St. Stephen's chapel, and continue to fuddle for pastime, with your Lordship's pay and the public money, and so as they are at hand when called upon by your Lordship, they know that it is all they have to care about. This is a true picture of what is called the majority of the House of Commons, and I durst challenge your Lordship to call on me for the proof of it.

The second paragraph which you quoted from the Republican is in the 12th No. as follows, speaking of the conduct of the House of Lords towards her Majesty:-"It is really nauseous to hear those old jades talking about justice and purity, it is just as if the inmates of a brothel should quarrel amongst themselves which was the most virtuous, and complain of a departure from the paths of virtue and morality." I claim this observation as my own, and consider it as true and praiseworthy, when I look at the treatment her Majesty has received from the House of Lords. The next paragraph which your Lordship quoted is in the same number and is a specimen of that base and paltry shuffling which your Lordship shews when you are hard beset; it is a paragraph quite extraneous and foreign to the subject before the house. It is printed in an article that has no allusion to the Queen or the prosecution against her, it is a general subject on monarchical governments, and not even applied to any pacticular one; it is thus:-"The earth has groaned under the curse of monarchical governments much too long. Civilization has struggled against it almost in vain; and nature herself, seemed almost to despair of shaking it off. But the monarchical form of government is like every other vice, it will destroy itself in the course of time, even if no opposition be made to it." Your Lordship should have added the next sentence as a particular. "The vices of the English monarchy are evidently precipitating it to a crisis and downfall." What had this last paragraph or the distinct observations on religion to do with the