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more of the chief men of the Tory party, contriving (by the refusal of sworn evidence) that the accuser of the Whig Premier should escape scot-free from the imminent peril of our real story becoming known. Sir Fitzroy Kelly is counsel, and Lord Abinger is judge—Lord Abinger, who began life as a Whig, warmed into a convert-Tory, and on whom (during the brief moment Lord Melbourne had been ousted to make way for the Peel-Wellington cabinet) so many Tory favours had been showered. What was I to think? Memoirs enough have been lately edited and published by ministers and the sons of ministers, to show the under-current of relation in which public men may stand to each other. If such are the jealousies and animosities of friends, what may not be expected from foes? Unforgotten by me were Lord Melbourne's own words:—"You take these slights to yourself; but they are not put upon you." My justification or condemnation, personally, was as nothing. But fatal (not only to Mr. Norton) would that sworn testimony have been, which proved that the plaintiff in the action against Lord Melbourne had declared that it was the work of others; that it was against his judgment; that he utterly disbelieved the accusation it involved; that he had entreated his wife to forgive it; to return to her home; and had put forward as one of his bitterest complaints, that she said she never would live with him again! That evidence was suppressed. But I tell Mr. Norton, on this printed page, that he himself does not know by what a double chance the risk of exposure was avoided; that even Lord Abinger's protection would have failed to shelter him, when I angrily resolved (as I did) to publish then the whole account of our case, and leave him to his remedy; but that Lord Melbourne dissuaded me from doing so. It so happened that this petty cause,—pleaded by Sir Fitzroy Kelly, and decided by Lord Abinger; in which nothing more important than a woman's fame and a woman's interests were at stake,—was tried at the exact moment (June, 1838), when, in the first year of a young
