necessary to vote an
extraordinary supply to the Crown, the Committee of Ways and Means would
have looked about for some unpopular capitalist to plunder. Appetite
would have grown with indulgence. Accusations would have been eagerly
welcomed. Rumours and suspicions would have been received as proofs. The
wealth of the great goldsmiths of the Royal Exchange would have become
as insecure as that of a Jew under the Plantagenets, as that of a
Christian under a Turkish Pasha. Rich men would have tried to invest
their acquisitions in some form in which they could lie closely hidden
and could be speedily removed. In no long time it would have been found
that of all financial resources the least productive is robbery, and
that the public had really paid far more dearly for Duncombe's hundreds
of thousands than if it had borrowed them at fifty per cent.

These considerations had more weight with the Lords than with the
Commons. Indeed one of the principal uses of the Upper House is to
defend the vested rights of property in cases in which those rights are
unpopular, and are attacked on grounds which to shortsighted politicians
seem valid. An assembly composed of men almost all of whom have
inherited opulence, and who are not under the necessity of paying court
to constituent bodies, will not easily be hurried by passion or seduced
by sophistry into robbery. As soon as the bill for punishing Duncombe
had been read at the table of the Peers, it became clear that there
would be a sharp contest. Three great Tory noblemen, Rochester,
Nottingham and Leeds, headed the opposition; and they were joined by
some who did not ordinarily act with them. At an early stage of the
proceedings a new and perplexing question was raised. How did it appear
that the facts set forth in the preamble were true, that Duncombe had
committed the frauds for which it was proposed to punish him in so
extraordinary a manner? In the House of Commons, he had been taken
by surprise; he had made admissions of which he had not foreseen the
consequences; and he had then been so much disconcerted by the severe
manner in which he had been interrogated that he had at length avowed
everything. But he had now had time to prepare himself; he had been
furnished with advice by counsel; and, when he was placed at the bar of
the Peers, he refused to criminate himself and defied his persecutors
to prove him guilty. He was sent back to the Tower. The Lords acquainted
the Commons