new establishments at the Cape of Good Hope, were reduced in the present year to a very miserable condition. For three years successsively, the crops of wheat and Indian corn had been famished by drought, or destroyed by a species of blight called rust; the soil and climate were discovered to be utterly unfit for purposes of tillage husbandry; and the resources of the settlers were wholly exhausted. Many of them applied to lord Charles Somerset for a conveyance to England or to Van Diemen's land; but the answer was, that no means of such conveyance 66 were at his excellency's disposal." During his temporarv absence in England, Sir R. Donkin, who held the command ad interim, with a view to the safety of the emigrants, established military posts in the neighbourhood of the Fish RiverFort Wiltshire, in advance of that river and Fredericksburgh, between the Fish River and the Beeka. The latter, composed of half-pay officers and other military

acquainted with the mode of Caffre warfare, was half way on the route towards the Caffres, and formed an effectual protection to the settlements newly created. Immediately on lord C. Somerset's return, all these safeguards of the colony were, it is said, withdrawn. The town of Bathurst, in the centre of the emigrant country, was stripped at once of its garrison, and deprived of its rank as county town; the capital of the unfortunate persons, who had expended their all in buildings and domestic establishments there, was lost, and the whole country was left at the mercy of the Caffre depredations. The consequence was, that the cattle were carried off by droves; the colonists, Dutch as well as English, attacked by the plunderers in open day; and some of them savagely murdered. complaints against his lordship's administration were loud; whether they were well founded or not, we are as yet without the means of judging.

The

MONG the alleged cases of

were in the present session, brought before parliament, only two deserve to be noticed: those of Mr. Bowring and of Mrs. Olive Serres, styling herself the Princess of Cumberland. Mr. Bowring's case was brought into discussion, on the 27th of February, by a motion of lord Archibald Hamilton for the production of certain papers connected with the imprisonment of that gentleman.* According to lord Archibald Hamilton's statement, Mr. Bowring, being on his return from a commercial journey to France and Italy, had arrived at Calais. After his baggage was examined at the Customs, he was informed, that he must submit his papers to an inspection; and being taken before the mayor, was com mitted to prison. In answer to his inquiries into the nature of his alleged crime, he was told that a telegraphic despatch had been received, directing the examination of his papers. After remaining in prison at Calais two days, he was conveyed, in obedience to another telegraphic despatch, to Boulogne.

• Vide Vol. LXIV, p. 216,

Here again he was refused the in

crime. He had not been long at Boulogne, before the inconvenience of his imprisonment was increased by many unnecessary severities. He was confined au secret in a loathsome prison, deprived of the society of his friends, and denied the benefit of professional advice. Mr. Bowring having in the mean time applied to Sir Charles Stuart for protection, a new charge at the end of eleven days was manufactured; and Mr. Bowring learned, that he was now accused of being engaged as an accomplice with others, in a plot against the French government. After several other examinations, at none of which he had been allowed a professional advocate, a letter was received at Boulogne, by which Mr. Bowring was summoned to go to Paris, but was at the same time informed that he could not be compelled to go. At length the proceedings were concluded by a sentence, the words of which were, that Mr. Bowring was set at liberty, because the crime, of which he was accused, did not warrant his imprisonment at all.

Mr. Canning, in reply, gave such an account of the con

duct of our government on this affair, as satisfied every person of the zeal of the secretary of the foreign department in protecting the rights of individuals. He stated, that, when he heard of the arrest of Mr. Bowring, it appeared to him, that the part, which the British government were bound to adopt, was, to take care that the laws, not of England, but of France, were applied to his case with perfect impartiality. Instructions were sent, within three quarters of an hour after the affair was known, to his majesty's ambassador at Paris, directing him to take instant measures to inquire into all the circumstances of the case; and, if there were no cause to war rant an application to the government as to some special measure, to watch carefully over all the proceedings, and to see that the law was administered with the best legal information, with perfect impartiality, and with strict justice. He did not feel it right to ask, that Mr. Bowring's case should be separated from that of any other set of men in France, native or foreigners: He was not entitled to demand that the writ of Habeas Corpus, or the trial by jury, should be introduced into the French territory, on account of Mr. Bowring: but he did think it proper, that, whatever was the practice in France towards an accused person, that practice should be strictly observed with respect to Mr. Bowring; that any deviation from it might justify national interference; and that national interference could only begin, when individual injustice was perpetrated. Mr. Bowring was, in the first place, arrested as the bearer of sealed letters, and as thereby defrauding the post-office of France, a crime

of no moral turpitude, a crime not malum in se, but malum prohibitum

an offence, however, which was a misdemeanor, by the English law. With us, it was visited by a pecuniary fine; in France, it was punished in a more summary manner. But, being detained as the carrier of letters, there grew out of those letters,or of other things which arose in the course of that accusation, matter which occasioned a charge of a heavier crime-a crime that incurred the punishment of imprisonment. On this latter crime, however, be it what it might, he was never brought to trial; and he was ultimately released. When he was released for the greater crime, he was not detained on account of the lesser; but was set at liberty, as the lesser crime did not incur the punishment of imprisonment. Mr. Bowring was not released because he had been unjustly imprisoned; but because the offence, which incurred the punishment of imprisonment, was not proceeded on, and the other offence had not that punishment attached to it by the French law. Mr. Canning added, that, during the whole of these transactions, if Mr. Bowring had been nearest to the British government in affection, and nearest to Mr. Canning's own feelings individually, it would have been impossible to watch over the proceedings with more anxious vigilance. But, when those proceedings were brought to an end (and their close, he believed, was precipitated by the interference of the British government; an interference, which called on the French government, not to let go, but to proceed or let go)—the only course for the British government to pursue was, to inquire whether any compensation was due to Mr.

Bowring, and to ascertain by the opinion, not of English lawyers, but of French lawyers, whether the entire proceedings were consonant with the usual course of French jurisprudence. Accordingly, he himself instructed sir Charles Stuart to lay before two of the first advocates of Paris, who were officially employed by government, and two other eminent advocates selected from the bar, and who were known to be politically hostile to the government, the whole proceedings in Mr. Bowring's case, and to ask whether, with respect to that individual, the ordinary course of the French law had been steadily observed ? The answer of these gentlemen (concurring in their knowledge of the law, but differing in their political opinions) was, that, in the proceedings to wards Mr. Bowring, the usual practice of the French law had been scrupulously observed-that those proceedings were exactly the same as would have been adopted towards a French subject. It therefore appeared, that Mr. Bowring, being in the French territory, had nothing more. to complain of, than any Frenchman who was detained without trial might complain of. That gentle man, undoubtedly, was detained. To that inconvenience the accusation necessarily subjected him. If the accusation were wanton and malicious, the course would be, to establish that fact by an individual proceeding; and in the progress of such proceeding (if the French law allowed it), Mr. Bowring was assured, that he should have the countenance and protection of the British government. If, however, the French law did not allow such a proceeding, Mr. Bowring could only regret that he had gone to a

country not so happy in its consti tution, and not so just in its laws, as the state which he had left ; and having subjected himself to the jurisprudence of that country, he must abide by the consequences.

On the 3rd of March, sir Gerard Noel presented a petition from Mrs. Olive Serres, asserting her claim of descent from the royal family;* and on the 18th of June, he moved that the petition should be referred to a select committee. Mr. Peel, on this occasion, showed satisfactorily, that Mrs. Serres either was herself practising a most impudent imposture, or was the innocent dupe of others. According to Mr. Peel's statement, there were formerly two brothers of the name of Wilmot; the one, Dr. Wilmot, the other a Mr. Robert Wilmot: and the person now claiming to be princess of Cumberland was the daughter of Robert Wilmot. Proof of her birth and baptism existed, and for a considerable time she had been contented with this humble origin. But in the year 1817, she discovered that she was the daughter not of Robert Wilmot, but of the late duke of Cumberland, brother to his late majesty. She did not then, indeed, pretend that she was the legitimate, but the illegitimate, daughter; and, in 1817, a petition, signed "Olive Serres," was presented to his majesty by a person on her behalf, which contained these words "May it please your royal highness to attend to the attestations which prove this lady to be the daughter of the late duke of Cumberland, by a Mrs. Payne, the wife of a captain in the navy. Mrs. Payne was the sister to Dr. Wilmot, and this lady was born

* Vide Vol. LXIV, pp. 11, 421.

at Warwick, and the attestation of her birth is both signed and sealed by the matron and the medical attendant." This petition represented her as the illegitimate daughter of the duke of Cumberland; but, in 1819, the lady became dissatisfied with this distinction, and then she discovered, and produced attestations to prove, that she was the legitimate offspring of the duke of Cumberland by the daughter of Dr. Wilmot. She alleged, that Dr. Wilmot had a daughter who was privately married to the late duke of Cumberland in 1767. It was known, that the duke of Cumberland was in fact married, not to Miss Wilmot, but to Mrs. Horton, in 1769. Of course, the ground of the petitioner's claim was, that the duke of Cumberland had been guilty of having been married to her mother two years before his union with Mrs. Horton. After the death of lord Warwick, and of every party who could prove the signatures, the petitioner produced several documents to show, that there had been a private marriage in 1767, and that she was the offspring of it. The marriage at that date would have been legal; the royal marriage act not then having been passed. She also produced various papers to account for the secret having been so mysteriously kept till the year 1819: but none of these papers had been forthcoming, until the death of every party whose signatures they purported to bear: even the accoucheur, who attended her mother, died in 1818, a year before the claim was advanced. The attesting witnesses to her documents were, Mr. Dunning, lord Chatham, and lord Warwick; and their names were used to prove a secret mar

riage, and the consequent birth of a child in 1772-no other, as was pretended, than the present Mrs. Serres. To account for the long belief that she was really the daughter of Mrs. Wilmot, she asserted that, Mrs. Wilmot, having been delivered of a still-born child, the petitioner, the daughter of the duke of Cumberland, was substituted for the sake of concealment, and that Mr. Dunning and lord Chatham had consented to that substitution. The story, said Mr. Peel, was full of fabrications from beginning to end; the two most important documents the supposed will of his late majesty, and the pretended certificate of the private marriage, were plain forgeries. The petitioner claimed 15,000l. under an instrument which she called a will, signed on the 2nd of June, 1774, by his late majesty, and witnessed, "J. Dunning, Chatham, and Brook." The terms of the bequest were singular. It was headed Ĝ. R. "In case of our royal demise, we give and bequeath to Olive, our brother of Cumberland's daughter, the sum of 15,000l., commanding our heir and successor, to pay the same privately to our said niece, for her use, as a recompense for the misfortunes she may have known through her father." This paper was witnessed, among others, by lord Chatham in 1774; now that nobleman had resigned his office in 1768, and never afterwards held any public employment: In 1772, he made a speech in direct oppo sition to the king's government; and, on the 20th of January, 1775, he moved an address to his majesty, to withdraw the troops from Boston. Those, who knew the sentiments of his late majesty on the subject of the American war