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.  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.  Your Lordships know that it is not; the Commons know that it is not; and because we have acted on that knowledge, and stigmatized crimes with becoming indignation, we are said to be actuated rather by revenge than justice.

If it should still be asked why we show sufficient acrimony to excite a suspicion of being in any manner influenced by malice or a desire of revenge, to this, my Lords, I answer, Because we would be thought to know our duty, and to have all the world know how resolutely we are resolved to perform it.  The Commons of Great Britain are not disposed to quarrel with the Divine Wisdom and Goodness, which has moulded up revenge into the frame and constitution of man.  He that has made us what we are has made us at once resentful and reasonable.  Instinct tells a man that he ought to revenge an injury; reason tells him that he