hough to speak nothing very new. The
same thing has been said in all times and in all languages. The language
of tyranny has been invariable: "The general good is inconsistent with
my personal safety." Justice and liberty seem so alarming to these
gentlemen, that they are not ashamed even to slander their own titles,
to calumniate and call in doubt their right to their own estates, and to
consider themselves as novel disseizors, usurpers, and intruders, rather
than lose a pretext for becoming oppressors of their fellow-citizens,
whom they (not I) choose to describe themselves as having robbed.

Instead of putting themselves in this odious point of light, one would
think they would wish to let Time draw his oblivious veil over the
unpleasant modes by which lordships and demesnes have been acquired in
theirs, and almost in all other countries upon earth. It might be
imagined, that, when the sufferer (if a sufferer exists) had forgot the
wrong, they would be pleased to forget it too,--that they would permit
the sacred name of possession to stand in the place of the melancholy
and unpleasant title of grantees of confiscation, which, though firm and
valid in law, surely merits the name that a great Roman jurist gave to a
title at least as valid in his nation as confiscation would be either in
his or in ours: _Tristis et luctuosa successio_.

Such is the situation of every man who comes in upon the ruin of
another; his succeeding, under this circumstance, is _tristis et
luctuosa successio_. If it had been the fate of any gentleman to profit
by the confiscation of his neighbor, one would think he would be more
disposed to give him a valuable interest under him in his land, or to
allow him a pension, as I understand one worthy person has done, without
fear or apprehension that his benevolence to a ruined family would be
construed into a recognition of the forfeited title. The public of
England, the other day, acted in this manner towards Lord Newburgh, a
Catholic. Though the estate had been vested by law in the greatest of
the public charities, they have given him a pension from his
confiscation. They have gone further in other cases. On the last
rebellion, in 1745, in Scotland, several forfeitures were incurred. They
had been disposed of by Parliament to certain laudable uses. Parliament
reversed the method which they had adopted in Lord Newburgh's case, and
in my opinion did better: they gave the forfeited estates to the
suc