When a false paper is made out to obtain
money, we call the act a forgery. That steward who takes bribes from his
master's tenants, and then, pretending the money to be his own, lends it
to that master and takes bonds for it to himself, we consider guilty of
a breach of trust; and the person who commits such crimes we call a
cheat, a swindler, and a forger of bonds. All these offences, without
the least softening, under all these names, we charge upon this man. We
have so charged in our record, we have so charged in our speeches; and
we are sorry that our language does not furnish terms of sufficient
force and compass to mark the multitude, the magnitude, and the atrocity
of his crimes.
How came it, then, that the Commons of Great Britain should be
calumniated for the course which they have taken? Why should it ever
have been supposed that we are actuated by revenge? I answer, There are
two very sufficient causes: corruption and ignorance. The first disposes
an innumerable multitude of people to a fellow-feeling with the
prisoner. Under the shadow of his crimes thousands of fortunes have been
made; and therefore thousands of tongues are employed to justify the
means by which these fortunes were made. When they cannot deny the
facts, they attack the accusers,--they attack their conduct, they attack
their persons, they attack their language, in every possible manner.
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