121
complain that the original simple question has been cunningly lost and covered, by the overwhelming scandal of Mr Norton's false defence. I resent,—not his treachery about the broken agreement, but his attempt to raise the laid ghost of a dead slander to shame me. I resisted it with passionate despair, because, let a woman struggle as she will, fair fame is blotted, and fair name is lost, not by the fact, but the accusation; and I feel it more now, even than in 1836, because then my children were infants and it could not grieve them. Those who have commented on the exasperation with which I answered in Court, would do well to remember, that I stood there, answering questions on oath which had no possible bearing on the case; well knowing those questions to be put with the express view and purpose of defaming me; knowing the charges implied by those questions to be false; knowing (the most despairing knowledge of all) that Mr Norton knew they were false, even while he put them; and that, instead of being allowed to prove the debt and agreement, I was once more being insulted with the echo of the trial of 1836, with as little just cause for the insult.
It is said, why all this scandal for a miserable matter of a few hundred pounds? Better any sacrifice than such a struggle. Very true; but when this petty struggle was undertaken, no human being could have foreseen the falsehood with which it was to be met, and out of which this scandal was to grow. Others, judging where none can judge who do not know our history, wonder I did not quietly take what Mr Norton asserts he offered. For that, I can only appeal to Sir John Bayley, and to the evidence of Mr Norton's present conduct. If Mr Norton would not be bound by his written pledge given to Sir John Bayley in 1837, nor by the formal document drawn up by Mr Leman in 1848, is it credible that he would be bound by a mere assertion, that he would or would not place such and such sums?
I have done. There will always be those to whom a slander is precious; and who cannot bear to have it refuted. There are also those in whose eyes the accusation of a woman is her condemnation, and who care little whether the story be false or true, so long as there is or was a story against her. But juster minds, who will pause and review the circumstances Mr Norton himself has published, will perhaps think the fate of that woman a hard one,—whom neither the verdict of a jury, nor the solemn denial of a voice from the dead, nor the petition of her husband for a reconciliation and oblivion of the past, can clear from a charge always and utterly untrue. I did not deserve the scandal of 1836, and I do not deserve the scandal of 1853. Lord Melbourne did not tempt me then to break my wedded faith; and his name has not now been the ground of a broken stipulation. On Mr Norton's own letter 1 am content that people should judge us both. Many friends have wished me to pass over that letter in disdainful silence, as refuting itself; and perhaps, if I were happy enough
