The Commons of Great Britain, following these examples and fortified by them, abhor all compromise with guilt either in act or in language.  They will not disclaim any one word that they have spoken, because, my Lords, they have said nothing abusive or illiberal.  It has been, said that we have used such language as was used to Sir Walter Raleigh, when he was called, not by the Commons, but by a certain person of a learned profession, “a spider of hell.”  My Lords, Sir Walter was a great soldier, a great mariner, and one of the first scholars of his age.  To call him a spider of hell was not only indecent in itself, but perfectly foolish, from the term being totally inapplicable to the object, and fit only for the very pedantic eloquence of the person who used it.  But if Sir Walter Raleigh had been guilty of numberless frauds and prevarications, if he had clandestinely picked up other men’s money, concealed his peculation by false bonds, and afterwards attempted to cover it by the cobwebs of the law, then my Lord Coke would have trespassed a great deal more against decorum than against propriety of similitude and metaphor.

My Lords, the Managers for the Commons have not used any inapplicable language.  We have indeed used, and will again use, such expressions as are proper to portray guilt.  After describing the magnitude of the crime, we describe the magnitude of the criminal.  We have declared him to be not only a public robber himself, but the head of a system of robbery, the captain-general of the gang, the chief under whom a whole predatory band was arrayed, disciplined, and paid.  This, my Lords, is what we offered to prove fully to you, what in part we have proved, and the whole of which I believe we could prove.  In developing such a mass of criminality and in describing a criminal of such magnitude as we have now brought before you, we could not use lenient epithets without compromising with crime.  We therefore shall not relax in our pursuits nor in our language.  No, my Lords, no! we shall not fail to feel indignation, wherever our moral nature has taught us to feel it; nor shall we hesitate to speak the language which is dictated by that indignation.  Whenever men are oppressed where they ought to be protected, we called [call?] it tyranny, and we call the actor a tyrant.  Whenever goods are taken by violence from the possessor, we call it a robbery, and the person who takes it we call a robber.  Money clandestinely taken from the proprietor we call theft, and the person who takes it we call a thief.  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.