A Bill of Attainder.

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counsel against it; and the appearance of a trial was so far given to the debate that Porter was examined; though, with an irregularity which no court of justice would have tolerated in the very worst times, the House also allowed evidence to be given of what Goodman would have been able to prove could the prosecutors have produced him, and of what he actually had proved against some of the other conspirators.

The Tory party in the House, of which nearly all the members had Jacobite leanings, fought stoutly for their friend; and many also who were not Tories resisted a bill which seemed by implication to put every man's life at the mercy of a Parliamentary majority. But, though the majority diminished in every division, the bill was finally passed by the Commons, and sent up to the House of Lords. There it was debated with even greater vehemence. So resolute were its promoters to carry it that officers were sent about to bring up any Peer who was suspected of a design to absent himself; and even the Bishops were compelled to vote, in spite of one of the canons of the Church which forbids divines to take any part in the infliction of capital punishment. As in the House of Commons, the majority for passing the bill diminished with every division, and the third reading was only carried by a majority of

seven.

The smallness of the majority revived the hopes of his friends; and, even after the bill was passed, great efforts were made to procure the prisoner's pardon. His wife, a member of the great family of Howard, presented one petition to the House of Lords, and threw herself at the King's feet with another, imploring that her husband's sentence might be commuted into one of perpetual banish

ment. But William remembered that Fenwick had insulted the Queen, whom he still mourned, and was inexorable. In consideration of the mode of procedure adopted against him, and of his noble connections, Sir John was indeed complimented with the axe on Tower Hill, instead of being subjected to the indignity of the gallows at Tyburn. But that was the only favour granted him; and on the 28th of January, 1697, he was executed.

It is now universally admitted that bills of attainder are indefensible on principle. During the fierce contests of the 16th and 17th centuries they had been employed by all parties against their adversaries, sometimes to create a new offence or to affix a definite character of guilt to deeds against which the laws had made no provision; sometimes to inflict a punishment beyond that which the law sanctioned; sometimes, as in the present case, to supply a deficiency of legal evidence. Every one of these objects is clearly unjustifiable. And such a measure is also open to a still graver objection. To pass it the Houses of Parliament erect themselves into a judicial tribunal, while the accused person, on whose fate they assume to decide, is deprived of all the safeguards to which every one in such a situation is entitled. The Houses are at once prosecutors, jury, and judges; and the history of every former measure of the kind shows that as judges they were accustomed to decide under no feeling of responsibility; that they did not even make any pretence to impartiality; but permitted the introduction of arguments wholly foreign to the real merits of the case, and often diametrically opposed to admitted rules of law; and, in fact, showed themselves almost wholly and avowedly influenced by party considerations.

In the case of Fenwick, their proceeding was in one

Objections to Bills of Attainder.

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point of view even more reprehensible than any former measure of the same character, for the object of it was to convict on the evidence of a single witness; while in an Act which had been passed in the very same year, the old provision which made the evidence of two witnesses indispensable had been deliberately retained. The advocates for the bill contended that the requirement was absurd; that there was no possible justification for requiring stronger proof before a man could be convicted of treason, than was sufficient to send him to the gallows for murder; that the evidence of one man of good character was in truth far more weighty and trustworthy than the evidence of two, or of a score, of witnesses of bad character (though they could not pretend that Porter's character was other than infamous); that there was no moral doubt of Fenwick's guilt; that it would be a great evil that he should escape punishment; and that there was no other mode by which he could be reached.

It was answered that no evil could be so great as that of overbearing the securities which a law so recently passed had preserved for those who might fall under the displeasure of the Government; and that the fact of prosecutions for treason being necessarily Government prosecutions rendered it not unreasonable that more evidence should be required in them than in actions between subject and subject. The opponents of the bill dwelt, too, on the extreme danger in which the liberties of the whole nation would be placed if Parliament should acquire a habit of erecting itself into a judicial tribunal; and further contended that, even if it were granted that some acts of attainder might possibly be justifiable, their justification must depend on the power of the person attainted to render himself for

midable to the Constitution or to the Government, a condition which no one could pretend to exist in the case of Fenwick. They showed, too, that all recent acts of attainder had been condemned by public opinion, since they had been unanimously reversed by subsequent Parliaments. Party spirit, as we have seen, overbore these arguments for the time; but they have been endorsed by all succeeding generations, and the blood of Fenwick is the last that has been shed by any sentence save one passed by the established courts of justice.

CHAPTER XV.

General weariness of the war-Louis proposes Peace-The treaty of Ryswick-Subsequent occurrences of William's reign-William desires to keep on foot a large army, and to retain his Dutch regiments -The Houses annul the grants of the Irish forfeited lands-The Commons resort to a tack-The partition treaties-Charles bequeaths his dominions to the Duke d'Anjou-- Impeachment and acquittal of Lord Somers-The succession to the Crown is settled on the Electress Sophia-Death of James II.-Louis proclaims the Pretender King of England-Death of William-General view of the RevolutionCharacter of the King and of the English statesmen of his reignWilliam - Halifax - Nottingham and Caermarthen - Somers and Montague-The great legislative measures of William's reign-The legislative Union with Scotland-Failure of the rebellions of 1715 and 1745 to overthrow the principles of the Revolution-Necessity of the Revolution.

DETECTED and baffled as it had been, this conspiracy had strengthened the King's Government. The baseness of the project of assassination had discredited plots and plotters, and during the rest of William's life he was never threatened by any similar danger.

Meanwhile the war was drawing to a conclusion. The combatants on both sides were nearly exhausted. The English Parliament, indeed, still granted the King unprecedented sums of money to keep on foot so large a force as had never been dreamt of in any former war. Nearly five millions of money were voted to pay 87,000 soldiers, and 40,000 sailors; and the Bank of England, a corporation