The House of
Commons did not spare him. They brought him to your bar. They found
spots in that sun. And what, I again ask, was his behavior? That of
contrition, that of humility, that of repentance, that which belongs to
the greatest men lapsed and fallen through human infirmity into error.
He did not hurl defiance at the accusations of his country; he bowed
himself before it. Yet, with all his penitence, he could not escape the
pursuit of the House of Commons, and the inflexible justice of this
Court. Your Lordships fined him forty thousand pounds, notwithstanding
all his merits, notwithstanding his humility, notwithstanding his
contrition, notwithstanding the decorum of his behavior, so well suited
to a man under the prosecution of the Commons of England before the
Peers of England. You fined him in a sum fully equal to one hundred
thousand pounds of the present day; you imprisoned him during the King's
pleasure; and you disqualified him forever from having a seat in this
House and any office in this kingdom. This is the way in which the
Commons behaved formerly, and in which your Lordships acted formerly,
when no culprit at this bar dared to hurl a recriminatory accusation
against his prosecutors, or dared to censure the language in which they
expressed their indignation at his crimes.
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