THE DEMEANOUR OF ENGLAND. 297 'this sentence of condemnation as one to be CHAP. IX ' delivered by liis Secretary of State, and after- '
- wards learn that the charge on which it rests
' is unfounded. And, even if it were warrant- ' able to make the sentence condemnatory in ' substance, the king might rightly demand that ' it should not be abusive in form — might cause ' it to be remembered a little that His general ' had been Lord Fitzroy Somerset.' Did the storm out of doors sound so loud within the walls of the Palace that no new ' Sir ' Herbert' was found to utter or write some such counsel ? Or, may it not be that some happier solution than this will be given in time to the world ? The despatch, we know, went out unchastened — went out clothed and armed with all the majestic authority which a State could lend to a slander ; and of course the bare fact when dis- closed brings down reproach on a Polity which failed to render impossible so glaring an outrage; but is there no room for conjecturing that some or one of the accidents so often found baffling the purposes of mortal men may have, after all, caused the omission which led to this ugly result ? It will be well for the monarchy, if any ex- plorer of desks, any searcher of journals and diaries, shall at last prove able to show that some official neglect, or some oversight or mis- take in the Palace intercepted the Koyal atten- tion to what I have called the pith of this egregious despatch, and that therefore the act
