39^ DEFENCE OF QUEEN CAROLINE. [1820. 



mother by Lord Minto, a partisan of Lord Granville 

 (who voted for the bill), would seem to show that our 

 case, as set forth in that address, had had its effect : 

 " Such then, my Lords, is this case. And again let 

 me call on you, even at the risk of repetition, never to 

 dismiss for a moment from your minds the two great 

 points upon which I rest my attack upon the evi- 

 dence ; first, that the accusers have not proved the 

 facts by the good witnesses who were within their 

 reach, whom they had no shadow of pretext for not 

 calling ; and, secondly, that the witnesses whom they 

 have ventured to call are, every one of them, irrepa- 

 rably damaged in their credit. How, I again ask, 

 is a plot ever to be discovered, except by the means of 

 these two principles? Nay, there are instances in 

 which plots have been discovered through the medium 

 of the second principle when the first had happened 

 to fail. When venerable witnesses have been seen 

 brought forward when persons above all suspicion 

 have lent themselves for a season to impure plans 

 when no escape for the guiltless seemed open, no chance 

 of safety to remain, they have almost providentially 

 escaped from the snare by the second of those two 

 principles ; by the evidence breaking down where it 

 was not expected to be sifted ; by a weak point being 

 found where no provision, the attack being unfore- 

 seen, had been made to support it. Your Lordships 

 recollect that great passage I say great, for it is 

 poetically just and eloquent, even were it not inspired 

 in the sacred writings, where the Elders had joined 

 themselves in a plot which had appeared to have suc- 

 ceeded ; ' for that/ as the Book says, ' they had 

 hardened their hearts, and had turned away their eyes, 



