King, established most conclusively the correctness of their opinion that no impeachment for high-treason could lie against her.  She could not be an accomplice in such an offence of one who, being a foreigner, could not have committed it.  It was equally impossible for the King to sue for a divorce, as one of his subjects might have done; because it was the established practice of Parliament not to entertain a bill of divorce without the judgment of the Ecclesiastical Court being previously obtained and produced.  And, under the circumstances, to obtain from the Ecclesiastical Court such a sentence as could alone lay the foundation for a bill of divorce was clearly out of the question.

The case was a new and extraordinary one, and, being such, could only be dealt with in some new and extraordinary manner.  And in all such cases an appeal to Parliament seems the most, if not the only, constitutional mode of solving the difficulty.  Where the existing laws are silent or inapplicable, the most natural resource clearly is, to go back to the fountain of all law; that is, to the Parliament, which alone is competent to make a new law.  In one point of view the question may seem unimportant, since we may well hope that no similar case will ever arise to require the precedent now set to be appealed to; but not unimportant, if it in any way or degree contributes to establish the great principle, that the solution of all matters of moment to the state belongs to the Parliament alone:  a principle which, in its legitimate completeness, carries with it a condemnation of many a modern association whose object, whether avowed or disguised, is clearly to supersede where it fails to intimidate the sole constitutional Legislature.

The abandonment of the bill was naturally hailed as a triumph by the Queen and her partisans; but with the excitement of the struggle against the government the interest taken in her case died away.  The next year, when she demanded to be crowned with her husband, his refusal to admit her claim elicited scarcely any sympathy for her under this renewed grievance; in truth, it was one as to which precedent was unfavorable to her demand.  And the mortification at finding herself already almost forgotten contributed to bring on an illness of which she died in less than a year after the termination of what was called her trial; and in a short time both she and it were forgotten.

For the next few years the history of the kingdom is one of progressive correction of abuses or defects.  The King paid visits to Ireland and Scotland, parts of his dominions which his father had never once visited, and in both was received with the most exultant and apparently sincere acclamations.  And, though one great calamity fell on the ministry in the loss of Lord Castlereagh—­who, in a fit of derangement, brought on by the excitement of overwork, unhappily laid violent hands on himself—­his death, sad as it was, could not be said to weaken or to affect