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 kingdom as assessed
to the land tax. If, therefore, two thirds of that property could have
been brought into the Exchequer, the land tax for 1699, a burden most
painfully felt by the class which had the chief power in England, might
have been reduced from three shillings to two and fivepence. Every
squire of a thousand a year in the House of Commons would have had
thirty pounds more to spend; and that sum might well have made to him
the whole difference between being at ease and being pinched during
twelve months. If the bill had passed, if the gentry and yeomanry of
the kingdom had found that it was possible for them to obtain a welcome
remission of taxation by imposing on a Shylock or an Overreach, by a
retrospective law, a fine not heavier than his misconduct might, in a
moral view, seem to have deserved, it is impossible to believe that they
would not soon have recurred to so simple and agreeable a resource. In
every age it is easy to find rich men who have done bad things for which
the law has provided no punishment or an inadequate punishment. The
estates of such men would soon have been considered as a fund applicable
to the public service. As often as it was