430 ACTION FOR A LIBEL [1821. 



most painful to see men whom I had known in good 

 business sitting behind empty bags, almost briefless, 

 owing to the accident of their being my seniors. It 

 was quite inexcusable in Eldon, who knew all these 

 things, to make himself the instrument of the King's 

 caprice and revenge. 



The Queen had always been extremely averse to 

 prosecutions for libel, a subject which she had many 

 occasions to consider fully during the proceedings in 

 1806, the disputes in 1813 and 1814, and the later 

 trial in the Lords, if trial it could be called, which 

 outraged all justice both in form and substance. She 

 was aware that nothing could be less satisfactory than 

 our law as regarded the offences of the press ; she was 

 satisfied that, according to the proceedings in England 

 in cases of libel, a person slandered, besides incurring 

 much anxiety and vexation, inevitably gives, if he prose- 

 cutes, greater publicity and circulation to the slander, 

 and enables the defence to add force to the calumnies. 

 All this was likely in her case to gratify her enemies, 

 and so prosecuting would be playing their game. 

 "When, therefore, we were discussing before her the 

 question of prosecuting the perjured witnesses on the 

 bill, she could with difficulty be brought to consider 

 the matter seriously, so strong was her opinion against 

 such proceedings ; and she was well satisfied to find 

 that technical difficulties made it hardly possible to 

 proceed against them. There was one case, however, 

 in which these difficulties did not exist, and it was on 

 every account absolutely necessary to make the excep- 

 tion. A clergyman of the Established Church had 

 preached a sermon of the grossest slander upon the 

 Queen's going to St Paul's to return thanks for her 



