n one of the most rising of European
statesmen. Canning was strongly impressed with a belief in the Queen's
innocence and he could not consent to become one of her formal public
accusers, which he must have done were he to remain a member of the
administration. Canning, therefore, after a time, gave up his place as
a member of the Government, and he left the work of the prosecution, as
it may be called, to be carried on by men less chivalrous and less
scrupulous. It is not necessary to go at any length into the story of
the proceedings before the House of Lords. These proceedings would
have been made memorable, if there were nothing else to make them so,
by the speeches which Brougham and {8} Denman delivered in defence of
the Queen. Never perhaps in the course of history have the ears of a
monarch's advisers been made to tingle by such sentences of magnificent
and scathing denunciation poured out in arraignment of the monarch's
personal conduct. Denman, indeed, incurred the implacable hostility of
George because, in the course of his speech, he introduced a famous
citation from Roman history which, although intended to tell heavily
against the King, was mistakenly believed by some of the King's friends
to convey a much darker and deeper imputation on the sovereign than
that which was really in Denman's mind.

[Sidenote: 1821--Queen Caroline and the King's coronation]

The case may be briefly said to have broken down. In the House of
Lords, where the friends of the sovereign were most powerful, there was
only a majority of nine for the third reading of the Bill of Divorce,
and the Bill if persevered in would yet have to encounter the House of
Commons. The Government, therefore, made up their minds to abandon the
proceedings, and thereupon the friends of the Queen exulted
tumultuously over the victory they had won. But the struggle was not
by any means at an end. The royal coronation had yet to come, and the
King was anxious that the ceremonial should be got through at as early
a date as possible. The Queen announced her determination to present
herself on the Day of Coronation and claim her right to be crowned as
Queen Consort of George the Fourth. Then the advisers on both sides
went to work anew with the vain hope of bringing about something like a
compromise which might save the sovereign, the Court, and the country
from scandalous and tumultuous scenes. Again the Queen was offered the
allowance which h