ADDRESS

TO THE

BRITISH PUBLIC.

"So Justice, whilst she winks at crimes,
Stumbles on innocence sometimes,"

HUDIBRAS.

His Majesty's Ministers having kindly condescended to recommend to us, for our rule of conduct, that "it is inconsistent with the principles of British justice to pronounce judgment without previous investigation,” we beg leave to second their recommendation, in the case of Colonel Wardle, to whom it is as applicable, and more justly due than to the

the Cintra Convention-Mongers. Gratitude should rather incline us to think well of the man, who has braved a host of corrupt peculators for your sakes, than to believe a woman, who, from her own confession, subsists on the profits of adulterous prostitution, and wreaks her vengeance on all those who have the courage to resist her extravagant demands. It would be well for you to reflect before you suffer yourselves to be led away to damp the ardour of such a man, and consequently of all men of similar patriotic principles, and commit a suicide on your country.

It would be an insult to common understandings to lose time in pointing out to you the state-tricks, and barefaced attempts, which have been put in practice to prejudice the public mind against their benefactor. When we witness the Attorney General assailing, from the Treasury Benches, the veracity of

Mrs. Mary Anne Clarke, when adduced against the Duke of York, and immediately afterwards, in Westminster Hall, gravely admitting and enforcing the evidence of the very same incredible witness against Colonel Wardle, the most charitable opinion that can be entertained of such contradiction is, that an Attorney General must have, at once, an official and a professional conscience, which are perfectly reconcileable, although as op posite as black and white. As the lawyer says to Hudibras:

"But you may swear, at any rate,
Things not in nature, for the state;
For in all courts of justice here,

A witness is not said to swear,

But to make oath, that is, in plain terms,
To forge whatever he affirms."

Let us see what oaths were made against Colonel Wardle. Mrs. Mary Anne Clarke makes oath, that she was to give the

Colonel every information in her power, to assist him in the investigation of the conduct of his Royal Highness the Duke of York; in return for which, he was to furnish her hou as part of the requital she was to have for her services."-But, before the House of Commons, she unequivocally declares (upon her honor!) that "she is actuated neither by malice, nor the hopes of gain;-that she neither has received, nor expects to receive, any remuneration for her testimony." How can we reconcile these two extremes, Mrs. Mary Anne Clarke, but in the words of Hudibras's epistle to Sidrophel?

that you have try'd that nothing's borne,

With greater ease than public scorn;
That all affronts do still give place

To your impenetrable face,

That makes your way through all affairs,

As pigs through hedges creep with theirs;

Yet, as 'tis counterfeit, and brass,
You must not think 'twill always pass;
For all impostors, when they're known,
Are past their labour, and undone."

Colonel Wardle, a gentleman of acknowledged HONOR, also denied that "he ever induced her to give her testimony by any promise of reward."--Now, it happens luckily for Mrs. Mary Anne Clarke, that, not having been examined on oath before the House of Commons, this self-contradiction is, in the eye of the law, only prevarication ; had it been otherwise, a jury would, in all probability, have deemed it perjury. -Yet (strange to say!) this witness, who was not worthy of credit in the House of Commons, when her veracity was unimpeached, was allowed to be a competent witness in Westminster Hall, when she was contradicting herself in the grossest manner, and in the very gist of the