BUT, my lords, I am not reduced to this painful necessity. I feel if I were to touch this branch of the case now, until any event shall afterwards show that unhappily I am deceiving myself — I feel that if I were now to approach the great subject of recrimination, I should seem to give up the higher ground of innocence on which I rest my cause; I should seem to be Justifying when I plead Not Guilty. It is foul, and false, and scandalous in those who have said (and they know that it is so who have dared to say), that there are improprieties admitted in the conduct of the Queen. I deny that the admission has been made. I contend that the evidence does not prove them. I will show you that the evidence disproves them.
One admission, doubtless, I do make; and let my learned friends who are of counsel for the Bill take all the benefit of it, for it is all that they have proved by their evidence. I grant that her Majesty left this country and went to reside in Italy.*
abridged
* After this beautifully crafted anticlimax, Brougham went on to detail the ‘inferior’ society Caroline had to endure in foreign lands (the air of irony hangs heavy over his remarks) but he insisted that her conduct was quite proper throughout. The Bill of Pains and Penalties passed in the House of Lords by a tiny margin, but Henry Brougham’s defence garnered so much public support that the Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool, withdrew the Bill before it could proceed any further. Caroline died on August 7th, 1821, a few weeks after the King’s coronation, which she was not permitted to attend.