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me about Lord Melbourne, on this disputed agreement; and he denies that he ever 'said or suggested' that he had any such stipulation Such are his admissions! I turn to his assertions.
Mr Norton's appointment was not given or promised by Lord Melbourne, before he knew me or visited at our house, but, on the contrary, after correspondence and intimacy; and it was not given as compensation for the loss of his Commissionership of Bankruptcy; on the contrary, the Chancellor insisted on controlling his own patronage, and gave notice that Mr Norton should not be permitted to hold both appointments.
I did not put my husband to needless torment and expense by extravagance and actions from my tradespeople; on the contrary, he broke his solemn written pledge with his own referee. Sir John Bayley, and advertised me in the newspapers, as Sir John Bayley can prove. Sir W. Follett did not advise the trial, or the measures taken by Mr Norton; on the contrary, he publicly disavowed him as soon as the trial was over, as the letter of Messrs Currie and Woodgate is extant to prove. Mr Norton has not proved by his letter that he has been 'just in his private affairs'; but, on the contrary, he has proved "himself as cruelly unjust as any man ever was, by meeting a true claim with a series of libellous accusations, raked up from the past, to slander the living and the dead.
I am content that those accusations should be taken at their worth; Mr Norton's word has been too recklessly pledged on matters easy of disproof, to be trusted where evidence is wanting, and nothing possible but denial. I say again, that henceforth and for ever, I rest my justification on this published confession of Mr Norton's; on its glaring contradictions in all matters to which it refers; on its strange admissions as regards his conduct towards me. Even on the showing of that confused letter, our story stands thus:—that after bringing a divorce trial in which he himself so little believed, that he wooed me home again the next year, he revives the slander which an English jury, the pledged "word of the deceased, and his own recal had refuted, with the bitterest expressions and false accusations, both against his wife and his dead patron. That he has done this, in the course of defence to a common action for debt; the simple question being, whether he was or was not bound to provide and set apart for a body of tradesmen the sum of 687l., the security for such sum being an agreement drawn out formally by a solicitor; at his own urgent request; to procure an arrangement he desired; signed by his own hand; and witnessed by two other persons. That he cannot assert that he had any stipulations whatever with me, respecting Lord Melbourne, my expectations from my mother, or my literary resources (all three of which he gave as his excuse); neither can he deny, that as the agreement embraced the contingency of his becoming Lord Grantley, it was intended to be permanent. I
