Page:English laws for women in the nineteenth century.djvu/57

45 "22nd April, 1836. "''Thank God your persecutors have terminated their labours. Their object was not truth or justice; not to examine into your character, but solely to criminate you. It has ended in your honour and their disgrace. N's conduct is really disreputable; but far less so than those who have hunted him on''."

Most premature were these congratulations! At the very time when Mr Norton was angrily wavering between the dread of exposure for himself, and the desire of vengeance, certain personages, who saw in our quarrel an opportunity for a stroke in politics, persuaded him to attack Lord Melbourne.

I know Mr Norton has denied that he was thus advised; especially by his friend and guardian Lord Wynford. I know that he made the incredible assertion, that his sole-adviser was a stable-helper, whom he himself had formerly discharged for drunkenness, and who was, at the time of this quarrel, a ragseller in Monmouth-street; that this man suddenly appeared, and told him a gross and strange story, on the strength of which he made up his mind to prosecute the Prime Minister of England. Let those believe this history who can; it is certainly possible that all that was said of the interference of political leaders, was as false as what they said of me; but, meanwhile, I know that the late King considered it a political plot; that Lord Melbourne himself thought so; that some of the witnesses affirmed they had been examined in Lord Wynford's house; and that, at all events, the impression of some such interference obtained sufficiently to make the Duke of Cumberland anxious to deny it on behalf of the Tory party, as Lord Melbourne's letters will prove. In the preceding year the Whigs had been turned out; Sir Robert Peel had been sent for in all haste from Italy, to form a Tory administration; and the new Government had been immediately outvoted on Lord John Russell's Church Temporalities Bill. In May, Lord Melbourne reconstructed a Whig