productive is robbery, and that the public had really paid far
more dearly for Duncombe's hundreds of thousands than if it had
borrowed them at fifty per cent.

These considerations had more weight with the Lords than with the
Commons. Indeed one of the principal uses of the Upper House is
to defend the vested rights of property in cases in which those
rights are unpopular, and are attacked on grounds which to
shortsighted politicians seem valid. An assembly composed of men
almost all of whom have inherited opulence, and who are not under
the necessity of paying court to constituent bodies, will not
easily be hurried by passion or seduced by sophistry into
robbery. As soon as the bill for punishing Duncombe had been read
at the table of the Peers, it became clear that there would be a
sharp contest. Three great Tory noblemen, Rochester, Nottingham
and Leeds, headed the opposition; and they were joined by some
who did not ordinarily act with them. At an early stage of the
proceedings a new and perplexing question was raised. How did it
appear that the facts set forth in the preamble were true, that
Duncombe had committed the frauds for which it was proposed to
punish him in so extraordinary a manner? In the House of Commons,
he had been taken by surprise; he had made admissions of which he
had not foreseen the consequences; and he had then been so much
disconcerted by the severe manner in which he had been
interrogated that he had at length avowed everything. But he had
now had time to prepare himself; he had been furnished with
advice by counsel; and, when he was placed at the bar of the
Peers, he refused to criminate himself and defied his persecutors
to prove him guilty. He was sent back to the Tower. The Lords
acquainted the Commons with the difficulty which had arisen. A