Page:Interesting letter from Queen Caroline to King George IV.pdf/11

 will and pleasure of your Majesty, and these, of course, your Majesty can take away whenever you please. There are more than four-fifths of the Peers in this situation, and there are many of them who might thus be deprived of the far better parts of their incomes.

If, contrary to all expectation, there should be found in some Peers, likely to amount to a majority, a disposition to reject the bill, some of these Peers may be ordered away to their ships, regiments, governments, and other duties; and, which is an equally alarming power, new Peers may be created for the purpose, and give their vote in the decision. That your Majesty's ministers would advise these measures, if found necessary to render their prosecution successful, there can be very little doubt; seeing that they have hitherto stopped at nothing, however unjust or odious.

To regard such a body as a Court of Justice would be to calumniate that sacred name: and for me to suppress an expression of my opinion on the subject would be tacitly to lend myself to my own destruction, as well as to an imposition upon the nation and the world.

In the House of Commons I can discover no better grounds of security. The power of your Majesty's ministers is the same in both Houses; and your Majesty is well acquainted with the fact, that a majority of this House is composed of persons placed in it by the Peers, and by your Majesty's Treasury.

It really gives me pain to state these things to your Majesty; and if it gives your majesty pain, I beg that it may be obscrvedobserved [sic] and remembered that the statement has been forced from me. I must either protest against this mode of trial, or by tacitly consenting to it, suffer my honour to be sacrificed. No innocence can secure the accused if the Judges and Jurors be chosen by the accuser; and if I were tacitly to submit to a tribunal of this description, I should be instrumental in my own dishonour.