Richmond Enquirer

Letter of Counsellor Phillips to the King.

LIVERPOOL, Oct. 6.—The following excellent letter to the king, from the pen of that celebrated barrister, Charles Phillips, Esq. we doubt not will be read with peculiar pleasure, as it relates most particularly to the situation of our persecuted queen. It is unnecessary to remark on the beauties of the composition: the work will speak for itself.

Sire—When I presume to address you on the subject which afflicts and agitates the country, I do so with the most profound sentiments of respect and loyalty. But I am no flatterer. I wish well to your illustrious house, and therefore I address you in the tone of simple truth—the interests of the king and queen are identified, and her majesty's advocate must be yours. The degradation of any branch of your family, must, in some degree, compromise the dignity of all, and be assured there is as much danger as discreet in familiarizing the public eye to such a spectacle. I have no doubt that the present exhibition is not your royal wish; I have no doubt it is the work of wily sycophants and slanderers, who have persuaded you of what they know to be false, in the base hope that it may turn out to be profitable. With the view, then, of warning you against interested hypocrisy, and of giving to your heart its naturally humane and noble inclination, I invoke your attention to the situation of your persecuted consort! I implore of you to consider whether it would not be for the safety of the state, for the tranquility of the country, for the honor of your house, and for the interests alike of royalty and humanity, that an helpless female should be permitted to pass in peace the few remaining years which unremitted misery has spared to her.

It is now, Sire, about five and twenty years since her majesty landed on the shores of England—a Princess by birth—a Queen by marriage—the relative of Kings—and the daughter and the sister of a hero. She was then young—direct from the indulgence of a paternal court—the blessings of her aged parents, of whom she was the hope and stay—and happiness shone brightly o'er her: her life had been all sunshine—time for her had only trod on flowers; and if the visions which endear, and decorate, and hallow home, were vanished forever, still did she resign them for the sacred name of wife, the sworn affection of a Royal husband, and the allegiance of a glorious and gallant people. She was no more to see her noble father's hand unheld the warrior's brow to fondle o'er his child—no more for her a mother's tongue delighted as it taught: that ear which never heard a strain—that eye which never opened on a scene but those of careless, crimeless, cloudless infancy, was now about to change its dulcet tones and fair visions for the accent and the country of the stranger. But she had heard the character of Britons—she knew that chivalry and courage co-existed—she knew that where the brave man and free man dwelt, the very name of woman bore a charmed sway: and where the voice of England echoed your Royal pledge to "love, and worship and cleave to her alone," she but looked upon your Sire's example, and your nation's annals, and was satisfied.

Pause and contemplate her enviable station at the hour of these unhappy nuptials! The created world could scarcely exhibit a more interesting spectacle.—There was no earthly bliss of which she was not either in the possession or the expectancy. Royal alike by birth and by alliance—honored as the choice of England's heir, reputed the most accomplished gentleman in Europe—her reputation spotless as the unfallen snow—her approach heralded by a people's prayer, and her footsteps obliterated by an obsequious nobility—her youth like the lovely season which it typified, one crowded garland of rich and fragrant blossoms, refreshing every eye with present beauty, and filling every heart with promised benefits! No wonder that she feared no famine in that spring tide of her happiness—no wonder that her speech was rapture, and her step was buoyancy! She was the darling of her parents' hearts—a kingdom was her dower—her very glance, like the sun of heaven, diffused light, and warmth, & luxury around it—in her public hour fortune concentered all its rays upon her, and when she sunk from its too radiant noon, it was within the shelter of a husband's love, which God and nature, and duty and morality, assured her unquestioning faith should be eternal. Such was she then, all joy and hope, and generous credulity, the credulity that springs from honor and from innocence. And who could blame it? You had a world to choose, and she was your selection—your ages were compatible—your births were equal—you had drawn her from the house where she was honorable and happy—you had a prodigal allowance showered on you by the people—you had bowed your anointed head before the altar, and sworn by its majesty to cherish and protect her, and this you did in the presence of that moral nation from whom you hold a crown, and in the face of that church of which you are the guardian. The ties which bound you were of no ordinary texture—you stood not in the situation of some secluded profligate, whose brutal satiety might leave its victim to a death of solitude, where no eye could see nor ear tell the quiverings of her agony.—Your elevation was too luminous and too lofty to be overlooked, and she, who confided with a vestal's faith and a virgin's purity in your honor and your morals, had a corroborative pledge in that publicity, which could not leave her to suffer or be sinned against in secret. All the calculations of her reason, all evidence of her experience, combined their confirmation. Her own parental home was purity itself, and yours might have bound Republicans to Royalty: it would have been little less than treason to have doubted you; and, oh! she was right to brush away the painted vermin that infest a Court, who would have withered up her youthful heart with the wild errors of your ripe minority! Oh! she was right to trust the honor of "Fair England's" heir, and weigh but as a breath-blown grain of dust a thousand follies and a thousand faults balanced against the conscience of her husband. She did confide, and what has been the consequence?

History must record it, Sire, when the brightest gem in your diadem shall have mouldered, that this young, confiding, inexperienced creature had scarcely heard the last congratulatory address upon her marriage, when she was exiled from her husband's bed, banished from her husband's society, and abandoned to the pollution of every slanderous sycophant who chose to crawl over the ruin! Merciful God! was it meet to leave a human being so situated, with all her passions excited and enflamed to the impulses of such abandonment? Was it meet thus to subject her inexperienced youth to the scorpion stinging of exasperated pride, and all its incidental natural temptations? Was it right to fling the shadow of a husband's frown upon the then unsullied snow of her reputation? Up to the blight of that all-withering hour no human tongue dared to asperse her character. The sun of patronage was not then strong enough to quicken into life the serpent brood of slanderers: no starveling aliens, no hungry tribe of local expectants, then hoped to fatten upon the offals of the Royal reputation. She was not long enough in widowhood to give the spy and the perjurer even a colour for their inventions. The peculiarities of the foreigner—the weakness of the female—the natural vivacity of youthful innocence, could not then be tortured into "demonstrations strong:" for you, yourself, in your recorded letter, had left her purity not only unimpeached but unsuspected. That invaluable letter, the living document of your separation, gives us the sole reason for your exile, that your "inclinations" were not in your power! That, Sire, and that alone was the terrific reason which you gave your consort for this public and near-irreparable degradation. Perhaps they were not; but give me leave to ask, are not the obligations of religion independent of us? Has any man a right to square the solemnities of marriage according to his rude caprices? Am I, your lowly subject, to understand that I may kneel before the throne of God, and promise conjugal fidelity till death, and self-absolve myself whenever it suits my "inclination?" Not so will that mitred Bench, who see her majesty arraigned before them, read to you the ceremony. They will tell you "it is the most solemn ordinance of man—consecrated by the approving presence of our Saviour—acknowledged by the whole civilized community—the source of life's purest pleasures, and of death's happiest consolations—the rich fountain of our life and being, whose draught not only purifies existence, but causes man to live in his posterity—they will tell you that it cannot perish by "inclination," but by crime, and that if there is any difference between the prince and the peasant who invoke its obligation, "is in the more enlarged duty entailed upon him, to whom the Almighty has vouchsafed the influence of an example."

Thus, then, within one year after her marriage, was she flung "like a loathsome weed" upon the world, no cause assigned except your loathing inclination! It mattered nothing, that, for you she had surrendered all her worldly prospects—that she had left her home, her parents, and her country—that she had confided in the honor of a Prince and the heart of a man, and the faith of a Christian; she had, it seems, in one little year "outlived your liking" and the poor, abandoned, branded, tear-rent outcast, must bear it all in silence, for—she was a defenceless woman and a stranger. Let any man of ordinary feeling think on her situation at this trying crisis, and say he does not feel his heart's blood boil within him! Poor unfortunate! who could have envied her her salaried shame and her royal humiliation? The lowest peasant in her reversionary realm was happy in the comparison. The parents that loved her were far, far away—the friends of her youth were in another land—she was alone and among strangers, and he who should have rushed between her and the bolt of heaven, left her exposed to a rude world's caprices. And yet she lived, and lived without a murmur: her tears were silent—her sighs were lonely: and when you perhaps in the rich blaze of earth's magnificence forgot that such a wretch existed, no reproach of hers awoke your slumbering memory. Perhaps she cherished the visionary hope, that the babe whose "perilous infancy" she cradled, might one day be her hapless mother's advocate! How fondly did she trace each faint resemblance! Each little casual paternal smile, which played upon the features of that child, and might some distant day be her redemption! How, as it lisped the sacred name of father, did she hope its innocent infant tone might yet awake within that father's breast some fond association! Oh, sacred fancies! Oh, sweet and solemn vision of a mother—who but must hallow thee! Blest be the day-dream that beguiles her heart, and robes each cloud that hovers o'er her child in airy colours of that heart's creation! Too soon life's wintry whirlwind must come to sweep the imprisoned vapour into nothing.

Thus, Sire, for many and many a heavy year did your deserted Queen beguile her solitude. Meanwhile for you a flattering world assumed its harlot smiles—the ready lie denied your errors—the vain courtier defied each act, which in an humble man was merely duty, and mid the din of pomp, and mirth, and revelry, if remorse spoke, 'twas inarticulate. Believe me, Sire, when all the tongues that flattered you are mute, and all the gaudy pageants that deceived you are not even a shadow, an awful voice will ask in thunder, did your poor wife deserve this treatment, merely from some distaste of "inclination?" It must be answered. Did not the altar's vow demand a strict fidelity, and was it not a solemn and a sworn duty "for better and for worse," to watch and tend her—correct her waywardness by gentle chiding, and fling the fondness of an husband's love between her errors and the world? It must be answered. Where the poorest rag upon the poorest beggar in your realm shall have the splendor of a coronation garment.

Sad, alas! were these sorrows of her solitude; but sad as they were, they were but in their infancy. The first blow passed—a second and severer followed. The darling child, over whose couch she shed her silent tear—upon whose head she poured her daily benediction—in whose infant smile she lived, and moved, and had her being, was torn away, and in the mother's sweet endearments she could no longer lose the miseries of the wife.—Her father, and her laurelled brother too, upon the field of battle, sealed a life of glory, happy in a soldier's death, far happier than thus dreadful day was spared them! Her sole surviving parent followed soon, and though they left her almost alone on earth, yet how could she regret them? She has at least the bitter consolation, that their poor child's miseries did not break their hearts. Oh, miserable woman! made to rejoice over the very grave of her kindred, in mournful gratitude that their hearts are marble.

During a long probation of exile and of woe, bereft of parents, of country, child and husband, she had one solace still—her character was unblemished. By a refinement upon cruelty, even that consolation was denied her. 'Twice had she to undergo the inquisition of a secret trial, originating in foul conspiracy, and ending in complete acquittal. The charity of her nature was made the source of crime.... The peculiarities inseparable from her birth were made the ground of accusation—her very servants were questioned, whether every thought, and word, and look, and gesture, and visit, were not all so many overt acts of adultery; and when her most sacred moments had been heartlessly explored, the tardy verdict which freed her from the guilt, could not absolve her from the humiliating consequences of the accusation. Your gracious father, indeed, with a benevolence of heart more Royal than his Royalty, interposed his arm between innocence and punishment; for punishment it was, most deep and grievous, to meet discountenance from all your family, and see the fame which had defied all proof, made the capricious sport of hint and insinuation. While that father lived, she still had some protection; even in his night of life there was a sanctity about him which awed the daring of the highway slanderer—his honest, open, genuine English look would have silenced a whole banditti of Italians. Your father acted upon the principles he professed—he was not more reverenced as a King than he was beloved and respected as a man: and no doubt he felt how poignant it must have been to be denounced as a criminal, without crime, and treated as a widow in her husband's life-time. But death was busy with her best protectors, and the venerable form which is lifeless now would have shielded a daughter and a Brunswick. He would have warned the Milan panders to beware of the honor of his ancient house: he would have told them, that a prying, pettifogging, purchased inquisition, upon the unconscious privacy of a royal female, was not in the spirit of the English character: he would have disdained the petty larceny of any diplomatic pick pocket—and he would have told the whole rabble of Italian reformers and swindling ambassadors, that his daughter's existence should not become a perpetual proscription: that she was doubly allied to him by birth and marriage: and that those who exacted all his wife's obedience, should have previously procured for her a husband's countenance. God reward him! There is not a father or an husband in the land, whose heart does not at this moment make a pilgrimage to his monument.

Thus having escaped from two conspiracies actually affecting her honour and life, finding all conciliation hopeless bereft by death: of every natural protector, and fearing perhaps that practice might make perjury consistent, she reluctantly determined upon leaving England. One pang alone embittered her departure; her darling, and, in despite of all discountenance, her duteous child clung round her heart with natural tenacity. Parents who love, and feel that very love compelling separation, alone can feel for her. Yet how could she subject that devoted child to the humiliation of her mother's misery! How reduce her to the sad alternative of selecting between separated parents! She chose the generous, the noble sacrifice—self-banished, the world was before her—no grateful sigh for England—one tear—the last, last tear upon her daughter's head—and she departed.

Oh Sire! imagine her at that departure!—How changed! how fallen, since a few short years before, she touched the shores of England! The day beam fell not on a happy creature—creation caught new colours from her presence, joy sounded its timbrel as she passed and the flowers of birth, of beauty, and of chivalry, bowed down before her. But now lone, an orphan and a widow—her gallant brother in his shroud of glory: no arm to shield, no tongue to advocate, no friend to console an o'erclouded fortune, branded, degraded, desolate, she flung herself once more upon the wave, to her less fickle than a husband's promises. I do not wonder that she has now to pass through a severer ordeal, because impunity gives persecution confidence. But I marvel indeed much, that then, after the joy of an exparte trial and the triumph of a committee though lingering exculpation, the natural safeguard of English justice did not stand embodied between her and the shore, and bear her indignant to your capital, the people the peerage, the prelacy should have sprung into a procession; all that was noble, or powerful, or consecrated in the land should have borne her to the palace gate, and demanded why their Queen presented to their eye this gross anomaly—Why her anointed head should bow in the dust, when a British verdict had pronounced her innocence—Why she was refused that conjugal restitution, when her humblest subject had a right to claim—Why the annals of their time should be disgraced and the morals of their nation endure the taint of this terrific precedent: and why it was that after their countless sacrifices for your royal house, they should be cursed with this pageantry of royal humiliation. Had this so acted, the divine irritation of this day might have been spared us. We should not have seen the filthy sewers of Italy disgorge a living leprosy upon our throne; and slaves and spies, imported from a creedless brothel, land to attaint the sacred Majesty of England. But who, alas! will succour the unfortunate? The cloud of your displeasure was upon her, and the gay, glittering, countless insect-swarm of summer friends abide but in the sun beam....She passed away—with sympathy I doubt not, but in silence.

Who could have thought that in a foreign land, the restless fiend of persecution would have haunted her? Who could have thought, that in those distant climes where her distracted brain had sought oblivion, the demoniac malice of her enemies would have followed? Who could have thought that any human form which hid a heart, would have slunk after the mourner in her wanderings, to note and con every unconscious gesture? Who could have thought, that such a man there was, who had drank at the pure fountain of our British law!—who had seen eternal justice in her sanctuary!—who had invoked the shades of Holt and Hardwicke, and held high converse with those mighty "spirits, whom mercy called to heaven as her representatives on earth!

Yet such a man there was who on the classic shores of Como, even in the land of the immortal Roman, where every stone entombed a hero, and every scene was redolent of genius forgot his name, his country, and his calling, hoard each coinable and rabble slander! Oh sacred shades of our departed sages! avert your eyes from this unhallowed spectacle; the spotless ermine is unsullied still; the ark yet stands untainted in the temple, and should unconsecrated hands assail it there is a lightning still, which would not slumber!—No, no; the judgment seat of British law is to be soared at not crawled to; it must be sought upon an eagle's pinion, and gazed at by an eagle's eye: there is a radiant purity around it, to blast the glance of groveling speculation....

His labour was in vain, sire. The people of England will not listen to Italian witnesses, nor ought they. Our queen has been, before this, twice assailed, and assailed on the same charges. Adultery, nay pregnancy, was positively sworn to; one of the ornamented sons of our navy, capt. Manby and one of the most glorious heroes who ever gave a nation immortality; a spirit of Marathon or old Thermopylae; he who planted England's red cross on the walls of Acre, and showed Nap. it was invincible. were the branded traitors to their sovereign's bed! Englishmen, and, greater scandal. English women, persons of rank, and birth, and ed.ucation, were found to depose to this infernal charge! The royal mandate issued for enquiry; Lord Erskine, Lord Ellenborough a man who had dallied accusations from his cradle, sat on the commission; and what was the result? They found a verdict of perjury against her base accusers! The very child for whose parentage she might have shed her sacred blood, was proved beyond all possible denial to have been but the adoption of her chastity.

"We are happy to declare to your majesty our perfect conviction that there is no foundation whatever for believing (I quote the very words of the commissioners) that the child now with the princess is the child of her royal highness, or that she was delivered of any child in the year 1802; nor has anything appeared to us which would warrant the belief that she was pregnant in that year or at any other period within the compass of our enquiries." Yet people of rank, and station, moving in the highest society in England, admitted even to the sovereign's court, actually volunteered their sworn attestation of this falsehood! Twenty years have rolled over her since, and set the same foul charge of adultery sustained not as before by the plausible fabrications of Englishmen, but bolstered by the habitual invention of Italians, is sought to be affixed to the evening of her life in the face of a generous and loyal people. A kind of sacramental ship-load—a packed and assorted cargo of human affidavits has been consigned it seems, from Italy to Westminster; thirty three thousands pounds of the people's money paid the pedlar who selected the articles; and with this infected freight which should have performed quarantine before it vomited its moral pestilence amongst us, the Queen of England is sought to be attainted. It cannot be Sire: we have given much, very much indeed. to foreigners, but we will not concede to them the hard earned principles of British justice. It is not to be endured, that two acquittals should be followed by a third experiment; that when the English "testament has failed," an Italian missal's "kiss shall be resorted to; that when people of character here have been discredited others should be recruited who have no character any where; but above all it is intolerable, that a defenceless woman should pass her life in endless persecution. with one trial in swift succession following another, in the hope perhaps, that her noble heart which has defied all proofs should perish in the torture of eternal accusation. Send back, then, to Italy, those alien adventurers: the land of their birth, and the habits of their lives, alike unfit them for an English court of justice. There is no spark of freedom—no grace of religion—no sense of morals in their degenerate soil. Effeminate in their manners; sensual from their cradles; crafty venal, and officious; naturalized to crime; outcasts of credulity; they have seen from their infancy their country a bagnio, their very churches scenes of daily assassination! their faith is form; their marriage ceremony a mere mask for the most incestuous intercourse; gold is the God before which they prostrate every impulse of their nature. A "auri sacra fames! quid non mortalia pectora cogis!" the once indignant exclamation of their antiquity, has become the maxim of their modern practice.

No nice extreme a true Italian knows:
But, bid him go to Hell—to hell he goes.

Away with them any where from us; they cannot live in England; they will die in the purity of its moral hemisphere.

Meanwhile, during this accused serenity even while the legal blood-hounds were on the scent, the last dear stay which bound her to the world parted. the Princess Charlotte died! I will not harrow up a father's feelings, by dwelling on this dreadful recollection. The poet says, that even grief finds comfort in society, and England wept with you. But, oh, God! what must have been that hapless mother's misery, when first the dismal tidings came upon her! The darling child over whose cradle she had shed so many tears; whose lightest look was treasured in her memory; who mid the world's frown still smiled upon her; the fair and lovely flower, which when her orb was quenched in tears, lost not its filial, its divine fidelity! It was blighted in its blossom; its verdant stem was withered! and in a foreign land she heard it, and alone—no, no, not quite alone, The myrmidons of Brougham were round her and when her heart's salt tears were blinding her, a German nobleman was plundering her Letters. Bethink you, Sire, if that fair paragon of daughters lived, would England's heart be wrung with this enquiry? Oh! she would have torn the diamonds from her brow, and dashed each royal mockery to the earth, and rushed before the people, yet in a monarch's but in nature's majesty—a child appealing for her persecuted mother! and God would bless the sight and man would hallow it and every little infant in the land who felt a mother's warm tear upon her cheek would turn by instinct to that sacred summons. Your daughter in her shroud, is yet alive, Sire—her spirit is amongst us—it rose unatoned when her mother saw it waifs amid the people—it has left the angels, to protect a parent.

The theme is sacred, and I will not sully it: I will not recapitulate the griefs, and worse than griefs, the vile, pitiful, deliberate insults which are burning on every tongue in England—every hope blighted—every friend discountenanced—her kindred in their grave—her declared innocence made but the herald to a more cruel accusation—her two trials followed by a third, a third on the same charge——her Royal character insinuated away by German picklocks and Italian conspirators—her divorce sought by an extraordinary procedure, upon grounds not tenable before any usual divorce ecclesiastical tribunal—her name meanly erased from the Liturgy—her natural rights as a mother disregarded, and her civil rights as a Queen, sought to be exterminated: and all this—all, because she dared to touch the sacred sentinel liberty! because she did not banish herself an implied adulteress! because she would not be bribed into an abandonment of herself and of the generous country over which she has been called to reign, and to which her heart is bound by the most tender ties, and the most indissoluble obligation. Yes, she might have lived wherever she selected, in all the magnificence which boundless bribery could procure for her offered her by those who affect such tenderness to your Royal character. and such devotion to the honor of your Royal bed. If they thought her guilty, as they allege, this lingering fire was a double treason—treason to your Majesty, whose honor they compromised—treason to the people, whose money they thus prostituted.—But she spurned the infamous temptation, and she was fought. She was hounded on by her insatiable accusers; even were she guilty, never was there victim with such crying palliations: but all innocent, as my conscience I have her to be, not perhaps of the levities contingent on her birth, and which shall not be converted into constructive crime, but of the severer charge of adultery, now for a third time produced against her.—She was, right bereft of the court, which was her natural residence, and all-conscious with innocence as she felt, bravely to fling herself upon the wave of the people—that people will protect her—Britain's red cross is her flag. and Brunswick's spirit is her pilot—May the Almighty send the Royal vessel triumphant through her boy!

Sire, I am almost done—I have touched but slightly on your Queen's misfortunes—I have contracted the volume of her miseries to a page, and it upon that page one word of end- you, impute it to my zeal not my intention.—Accustomed all my life to speak the simple truth, I offer it with tearless honesty to my Sovereign. You are in a difficult—it may be in a most perilous emergency. Banish from your court the sycophants who abuse you;—surround your palace with approving multitudes not with armed mercenaries. Other crowns may be bestowed by despots and entrenched by cannon; but
The throne we honor is the people's choice.
It safest buiwark is the popular heart, and
its brightest ornament, domestic virtue. Forget
not also there is a throne which is above even
the throne of England—where flatterers cannot
come—where kings are sceptreless. The vows
you made are written in language brighter
than the sun, and in the course of nature you
must soon confront them; prepare the way
by effacing now, each staining, slight, and
fancied injury: and when you answer the last
awful trumpet, be your answer this:—"GOD,
I FORGAVE..I HOPE TO BE FOR-
GIVEN"

But it against all, loyalty, and all humanity,
and all religion, you should hearken to the
counsels which further countenance this in-
human persecution, then must I appeal not to
you, but to your parliament. I appeal to the
sacred prelacy of England, whether the holy
vows which their high church administered,
have been kept towards this illustrious lady—
whether the hand of man should have erased
her from that page, with which it is worse
than presumption in man to interfere—whether,
as heaven's vicegerent, they will not adjure
the sordid passions of the earth, imitate the
inspired humanity of their Savior, and, like
him protect a persecuted creature from the
insatiate fangs of ruthless, bloody, and unti-
ring accusation!

I appeal to the hereditary peerage of the realm,
whether they will aid this unserved denun-
ciation of their Queen—whether they will ex-
hume the unseemly spectacle of monstrous rank and
royalty degraded for the crime of claiming its
inheritance—whether they will hold a
court of civil criminal on, where the accused
is entitled to the mercy of an impeachment; or
whether they will say with their immortal an-
cestor's—"We will not tamper with the laws
of England?"

I appeal to the ermined, independent judges,
whether life is to be made a perpetual martyr-
dom in England—whether two acquittals should not dis-
courage a third experiment—whether,
if any subjects' sadder case came to their tribunal
thus circumstanced, claiming either divorce or
compensation, they would grant his suit: and
I invoke, from them, by the eternal majesty
of British justice, the same measure for the
peasant and the prince.

I appeal to the Commons in parliament as-
sembled, representing the father, and the hus-
band of the nation— I beseech them by the
outraged morals of the land—by the over-
shadowed dignity of the throne! by the hon-
est and tenderest forms of religion—by the
honor of the army, the sanctity of the church,
the safety of the state and the character of the
country! by the solemn virtues which conse-
crate their hearths! by those fond endearments
of nature and of habit which attach them to
their cherished wives and families. I implore
their tears, their protection, and their pity
upon the married widow and the childless mo-
their

To those high powers and authorities I ap-
peal with the firmest confidence in their hon-
our, their integrity and their wisdom. May
their conduct justify their faith, and raise no
blush on the cheek of our posterity.

I have the honour to subscribe myself,
Sire,
Your Majesty's most faithful subject.
CHARLES PHILLIPS.