I
have said, my Lords, that ignorance is the other cause of this calumny
by which the House of Commons is assailed. Ignorance produces a
confusion of ideas concerning the decorum of life, by confounding the
rules of private society with those of public function. To talk, as we
here talk, to persons in a mixed company of men and women, would violate
the law of such societies; because they meet for the sole purpose of
social intercourse, and not for the exposure, the censure, the
punishment of crimes: to all which things private societies are
altogether incompetent. In them crimes can never be regularly stated,
proved, or refuted. The law has therefore appointed special places for
such inquiries; and if in any of those places we were to apply the
emollient language of drawing-rooms to the exposure of great crimes, it
would be as false and vicious in taste and in morals as to use the
criminatory language of this hall in drawing and assembling rooms would
be misplaced and ridiculous. Every one knows that in common society
palliating names are given to vices. Adultery in a lady is called
gallantry; the gentleman is commonly called a man of good fortune,
sometimes in French and sometimes in English. But is this the tone which
would become a person in a court of justice, calling these people to an
account for that horrible crime which destroys the basis of society?
No, my Lords, this is not the tone of such proceedings.
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