containing a mass of testimony and accusations concerning the queen's
conduct with her Italian chamberlain, Pergami. On June 6, Queen Caroline
arrived from Italy. Having been refused passage on a royal ship, she
chartered a vessel of her own. This bold step was taken to imply innocence.
She was received with great popular demonstrations in her favor. Before a
secret committee of Parliament, Queen Caroline offset the King's charges
against her by laying stress on his own well-known failings as a husband.
On July 5, Lord Liverpool introduced a bill of "Pains and Penalties" to
dissolve the marriage of Queen Caroline. Her trial was taken up by the
House of Lords, where she was defended by Lord Brougham. To this day the
proceedings of the trial are remembered as one of the most outrageous
scandals in England. The feelings thereby engendered in the people have
been immortalized in the trenchant writings of Thackeray. Before the trial
was concluded, Lord Liverpool's bill was brought up for the third time in
Parliament. It passed by a majority of a few votes. With so slender an
indorsement, the Ministry had cause to tremble for its existence. Lord
Liverpool prevailed upon the King to recede from his extreme position, and,
succeeding in this, moved for the abandonment of the bill. The trial was
quashed. Queen Caroline died shortly afterward.

[Sidenote: The Missouri Compromise]

[Sidenote: Cabinet in a quandary]

In America, public feeling was no less excited. The occasion for this was
the first serious clash of the Northern and Southern factions of the United
States over what was known as the Missouri Compromise. On February 18, the
Missouri Compromise bill passed the Senate, and on March 2 the House. It
admitted Missouri as a slave State, and prohibited slavery north of
parallel 36 deg. 30', the southern line of Missouri. Henry Clay declared that
it settled the slavery question "forever." The bill went to the President.
There was still another compromise, and that was in the Cabinet. The
President asked advice on two points. The first point was whether Congress
had a Constitutional right to prohibit slavery in a Territory. The Cabinet
agreed that the right existed. Then the question arose whether the section
prohibiting slavery "forever" referred only to the territorial condition,
or whether it also applied when the Territory became a State. The Cabinet,
with the exception of Adams, agreed that "forever" applied only to the
t