terrible that the State could be safe only when he was in the grave.

It was acknowledged that precedents might be found for this bill, or
even for a bill far more objectionable. But it was said that whoever
reviewed our history would be disposed to regard such precedents rather
as warnings than as examples. It had many times happened that an Act of
Attainder, passed in a fit of servility or animosity, had, when fortune
had changed, or when passion had cooled, been repealed and solemnly
stigmatized as unjust. Thus, in old times, the Act which was passed
against Roger Mortimer, in the paroxysm of a resentment not unprovoked,
had been, at a calmer moment, rescinded on the ground that, however
guilty he might have been, he had not had fair play for his life. Thus,
within the memory of the existing generation, the law which attainted
Strafford had been annulled, without one dissentient voice. Nor, it
was added, ought it to be left unnoticed that, whether by virtue of the
ordinary law of cause and effect, or by the extraordinary judgment of
God, persons who had been eager to pass bills of pains and penalties,
had repeatedly perished by such bills. No man had ever made a more
unscrupulous use of the legislative power for the destruction of his
enemies than Thomas Cromwell; and it was by an unscrupulous use of the
legislative power that he was himself destroyed. If it were true that
the unhappy gentleman whose fate was now trembling in the balance had
himself formerly borne a part in a proceeding similar to that which was
now instituted against him, was not this a fact which ought to suggest
very serious reflections? Those who tauntingly reminded Fenwick that he
had supported the bill which attainted Monmouth might perhaps themselves
be tauntingly reminded, in some dark and terrible hour, that they had
supported the bill which had attainted Fenwick. "Let us remember what
vicissitudes we have seen. Let us, from so many signal examples of the
inconstancy of fortune, learn moderation in prosperity. How little
we thought, when we saw this man a favourite courtier at Whitehall, a
general surrounded with military pomp at Hounslow, that we should live
to see him standing at our bar, and awaiting his doom from our lips! And
how far is it from certain that we may not one day, in the bitterness of
our souls, vainly invoke the protection of those mild laws which we now
treat so lightly! God forbid that we should ever again be subject to
t