Page:Interesting letter from Queen Caroline to King George IV.pdf/5

 much for me to enjoy. From the very threshold of your Majesty's mansion the mother of your child was pursued by spies, conspirators, and traitors, employed, encouraged, and rewarded to lay spares for the feet, and to plot against the reputation and life, of her whom your Majesty had so recently and so solemnly vowed to honour, to love, and to cherish.

In withdrawing from the embraces of my parents, in giving my hand to the son of George the Third and the heir-apparent to the British throne, nothing less than a voice from Heaven would have made me fear injustice or wrong of any kind. What, then, was my astonishment at finding that treasons against me had been carried on and matured, perjuries against me had been methodised and embodied, a secret tribunal had been held, a trial of my actions had taken place, and a decision had been made upon those actions, without my having been informed of the nature of the charge, or of the names of the witnesses; and what words can express the feelings excited by the fact, that this proceeding was by the order of the father of my child, and my natural as well as legal guardian and protector?

Notwithstanding, however, the unprecedented conduct of that tribunal-conduct which has since undergone, even in Parliament, scveresevere [sic] and unanswered animadversions, and which has been also censured in minutes of the Privy Council-notwithstanding the secresy of the proceedings of this tribunal—notwithstanding the strong temptation to the giving of false evidence against me before it-notwithstanding that there was no opportunity afforded me of rebutting that evidence-notwithstanding all these circumstances, so decidedly favourable to my enemies—even this secret tribunal acquitted me of all crime, and thereby pronounced my principal accusers to have been guilty of the grossest perjury. But it was now (after the