Volume 1

Letters to the Right Honourable Lord Mansfield. From Andrew Stuart, esq. [On the Douglas Peerage Cause.] / [Andrew Stuart].

  • Andrew Stuart
Date:
[1773]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letters to the Right Honourable Lord Mansfield. From Andrew Stuart, esq. [On the Douglas Peerage Cause.] / [Andrew Stuart]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    95/208 (page 51)
    [ 5‘ ] • s v * Lady jane Douglas had really been delivered byDefa- marre, the friend of Menager. If the accoucheur defcribed and fixed upon by Sir John Stewart himfelf had been adopted in preference to the perfon fuggefted by Menager, there might have been fome fort of excufe made (if forgery admits of any ex- cufe) for Sir John and Lady Jane’s forging letters in the year 1752 from him, becaufe he was not a native of France ; He was a man much addicted to wandering from one country to another, who had no fettled abode anywhere; and therefore they might not know where to find him, fo as to get letters from him. But the moment that you adopt Menager’s Delamarre, who had his conftant and known refidence at Paris, and who was alive at the very time that Sir John and Lady- Jane were employed in forging letters from a perfon to¬ tally incompatible with him, every thing becomes in¬ explicable, except upon the fuppofition of a fiititious delivery. There are, my Lord, fome things beyond the reach even of the greateft abilities ; Of this fort is the at¬ tempt to identify two perfons fo incompatible as the ac¬ coucheur defcribed by Sir John Stewart and that fug¬ gefted by Menager, Or the attempt to reconcile the for¬ gery of the letters, and the conduit of Sir John and Lady Jane, with the poflibility of that Lady’s having been delivered byDelamarre of Paris, Menager’s friend. There muft be an end of reafoning in judicial mat¬ ters, unlels we fuppofe the perfons, whofe guilt or in¬ nocence is the fubjeit of inquiry, to be formed like the reft of the human race, and to be actuated in eftential matters by fuch principles and motives of aition as go¬ vern the conduit of the world in general, N % Th*