But ministers themselves were not on a bed of roses. They were exceedingly embarrassed by the Queen’s announcement that she intended to be present every day in the House of Lords during the progress of what was now properly called ‘The Queen’s Trial.’ Their anger, too, was excited at the sharp philippics against them inserted in her Majesty’s replies to the addresses presented to her. In those replies the passages complained of wounded more than those against whom they were pointed; and the authors of them had, no doubt, some mirth over sentences intended to spoil it in the breasts of ministers charged with rebelliously seeking to dethrone their lawful Queen. The royal replies, too, were equally, but not so directly, severe against those former counsellors and advocates of her Majesty who were now arrayed on the side of her Majesty’s enemy. These replies were, of course, not censured by the ministerial opponents in either House of Parliament. The addresses which called them forth, however, did not escape reproach from this quarter. Lord John Russell, in a letter to Mr. Wilberforce, does not indeed go so far as reproach. He says: ‘I regret, though I cannot severely blame, the language of many of the addresses that have been presented to the Queen.’ Lord John acknowledged the political nullity of the Whigs at this time, but he held that the Wilberforce party in the Commons were sufficiently powerful to have successfully resisted the scandal which the Government had brought upon the kingdom. ‘In your hands, sir,’ he says, ‘is perhaps the fate of this country. The future historian will ask whether it was right to risk the welfare of England--her boasted constitution, her national power--on the event of an inquiry into the conduct of the Princess of Wales in her villa upon the Lake of Como? From the majority which followed you in the House of Commons, he will conclude you had the power to prevent the die being thrown. He will ask if you wanted the inclination.’