lity of the public by a reference which does not bear him out in one of his statements-viz., the delivery of a hundred prisoners to the queen, their shipment, their deaths by fever and starvation, their sale, and the profit cleared by her. Where are his proofs that any one of these circumstances took place? The whole structure of the romance rests on this foundation, that Sunderland wrote to Jeffreys "that the queen had asked for a hundred of them;" but even if the revolting train of circumstances related by Mr. Macaulay were actually to be found in the said letter, ought anything emanating from so false a witness as the perjured apostate Sunderland, to be regarded as conclusive of the guilt of the queen, whose husband's cause he was betraying? Sunderland was the secret tool of the prince of Orange, and is accused withal of having been the incendiary who had stirred up the very insurrection which he ultimately rendered a source of pecuniary profit to himself, by the nefarious trafic in pardons which he carried on through a secret understanding with the atrocious doomsman Jeffreys. Those for whom Sunderland interceded being invariably spared, while major Holmes, whom the king had pardoned, was executed. Sunderland was an unprincipled spendthrift, an unlucky gambler, and, of course, a necessitous man, he was also a rapacious extortioner. He was a republican by education, the elève of Shaftesbury, and dyed deep in the wholesale murders perpetrated by the exclusionist party, under the flimsy pretext of a Popish plot. He and his friend Jeffreys, who had also been a noted member of the same clique, changed their politics when the court party proved the strongest, and James II. was guilty of the infatuation of not only employing, but confiding in men who had already given proofs of what they were. Sunderland pretended to become a Roman catholic, and afterwards apologized to his no-popery allies of the Orange party, by declaring "that he had done so the better to serve the protestant cause;" but the leopard changeth not his spots, the dishonesty and duplicity of this traitor to his king and apostate to his God, and his secret practices with the Dutch party, were the main-springs by which the ruin of the royal cause was effected, and the revolution of 1688 brought about. Would the learned member of a profession, whereof the law of evidence is, perhaps, one of the most important branches of knowledge, allow a client of his own to be condemned on no better testimony than an inference drawn from so questionable a source? In cases where the evidence is neither positive nor presumptive, but merely an implication, in which the name of an innocent person might be unconsciously involved, the general characteristics of the accused, if of a nature inconsistent with the accusation, are usually allowed to have some weight, and in a court of justice will generally lead to a verdict of acquittal. It is therefore only fair, as a matter particularly in point, to remind the reader, that Mary Beatrice, on the day of her coronation, only five months previously to this date, did, at her own expense, release all the prisoners confined for debts, under the amount of five pounds, from every jail throughout her royal husband's dominions, and that without respect to differences of creed or party; indeed, a very large majority of those objects of her tender compassion must necessarily have been protestants. In Newgate alone, eighty persons were enfranchised by this munificent act of queenly charity.* * Historic Observes, by Sir John Lauder, of Fountain Hall. Those who are so little versed in the constitution of the human heart as to suppose that the same person could be guilty of" the unfeminine cruelty and unprincely greediness" attributed to her by Mr. Macaulay, may well be reminded of the apostolic query: "Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?" Elizabeth Charlotte duchess of Orleans, the niece of Sophia, electress of Hanover, was at any rate an unprejudiced witness; and after thirty years' acquaintance with Mary Beatrice, she, in a private letter to one of her German relatives, bears the following testimony to the real character and conduct of that much calumniated prin cess: "Yesterday morning, about seven o'clock, the good, pious, and virtuous queen of England died at St. Germains. She must be in heaven. She left not a dollar for herself, but gave away all to the poor, maintaining many families. She never, in her life, did wrong to any one. If you were about to tell her a story of any one, she would say, 'If it be any ill, I beg you not to relate it to me: I do not like stories that attack the reputation.'"* * Historical Correspondence and Remains of Elizabeth Charlotte, duchess of Orleans. Paris, 1844. KING JAMES II. TO HIS YOUNGEST DAUGHTER, THE MORNING OF HER BIRTH. AMIDST What adverse storms of fate Hast thou put forth, my tender flower; But, happy in thy guileless state, Joy of my dark and wintry years, But, oh! e'en thus-e'en thus, my child, Ay, those whose cruel hearts beguiled, Wilt thou, with deeds like theirs, repay Thy father's care and tender love; When foes surround him—friends betray, Wilt thou, too, basely turn away, The falsest 'midst the false to prove? Thy sisters did—but, oh! not now I cannot gaze on that fair brow I'll rather deem that thou art sent The wounds which they have given to heal; And this sad heart, so sorely rent, Once more a parent's sweet content In thy dear love may feel. Nor will I mourn a fallen throne, |