ional decency and morality which the ministers, above
all men, were bound to avoid; partly, also, because the mode of
proceeding adopted was alleged to be wholly unprecedented; and because,
as was contended, the power of Parliament ought not to be invoked to
inflict penalties which, if deserved, should have been left to the
courts of law. It cannot be denied that there is weight in these
objections; but, in estimating their force, it must be considered that
every part of the conduct of the ministers showed that their motive was
not the gratification of the King's private feelings, whether directed
to the object of indulging his enmity against his wife or to that of
obtaining freedom to contract a second marriage; on the contrary, so
long as the Queen remained abroad, no language could be more distinct,
consistently with the respect due to his royal dignity, than that in
which they expressed to him their insurmountable objection to every mode
of proceeding against her which he had suggested, founded almost equally
on considerations of "the interests of his Majesty and of the
monarchy,"[186] and "the painful obligation" under which they conceived
themselves to lie "of postponing their regard for his Majesty's feelings
to great public interests."

But when the Queen came to England the case was greatly altered. The
question now forced on the consideration of the cabinet was, not the
mode of avoiding an intolerable scandal, but the choice between two
scandals, both of the gravest character. The scandal to be dreaded from
the revelations of the conduct of both King and Queen, that could not
fail to result from the investigation which, in justice, must precede
any attempt to legislate on the subject, was, indeed, as great as ever;
but it had now to be compared with the alternative scandal of allowing a
woman lying under such grievous imputations to preside over the British
court, as, if resident in England, and in undisturbed possession of her
royal rank, she of necessity must preside. The consequence would
evidently have been that the court would have been deserted by all who
could give lustre and dignity to it by their position and character;
and, in the slights thus offered to her, royalty and the monarchy
themselves would seem to be brought into contempt. The latter scandal,
too, would be the more permanent. Grievous and shameful as might be the
disclosures which must be anticipated from an investigation in which the
pers