damages, impose a large fine. As housebreakers are more likely to
take plate and jewellery than to cut throats; as juries are far
more likely to err on the side of pecuniary severity in assessing
damages than to send to the gibbet any man who has not richly
deserved it; so a legislature, which should be so unwise as to
take on itself the functions properly belonging to the Courts of
Law, would be far more likely to pass Acts of Confiscation than
Acts of Attainder. We naturally feel pity even for a bad man
whose head is about to fall. But, when a bad man is compelled to
disgorge his ill-gotten gains, we naturally feel a vindictive
pleasure, in which there is much danger that we may be tempted to
indulge too largely.

The hearts of many stout Whigs doubtless bled at the thought of
what Fenwick must have suffered, the agonizing struggle, in a
mind not of the firmest temper, between the fear of shame and the
fear of death, the parting from a tender wife, and all the gloomy
solemnity of the last morning. But whose heart was to bleed at
the thought that Charles Duncombe, who was born to carry parcels
and to sweep down a counting-house, was to be punished for his
knavery by having his income reduced to eight thousand a year,
more than most earls then possessed?

His judges were not likely to feel compassion for him; and they
all had strong selfish reasons to vote against him. They were all
in fact bribed by the very bill by which he would be punished.

His property was supposed to amount to considerably more than
four hundred thousand pounds. Two thirds of that property were
equivalent to about sevenpence in the pound on the rental of the