ainting Monmouth of high treason.
Addresses were voted assuring the King that both his peers and his
people were determined to stand by him with life and fortune against
all his enemies. At the next meeting of the Houses they ordered the
Declaration of the rebels to be burned by the hangman, and passed the
bill of attainder through all its stages. That bill received the
royal assent on the same day; and a reward of five thousand pounds was
promised for the apprehension of Monmouth. [369]

The fact that Monmouth was in arms against the government was so
notorious that the bill of attainder became a law with only a faint
show of opposition from one or two peers, and has seldom been severely
censured even by Whig historians. Yet, when we consider how important it
is that legislative and judicial functions should be kept distinct, how
important it is that common fame, however strong and general, should not
be received as a legal proof of guilt, how important it is to maintain
the rule that no man shall be condemned to death without an opportunity
of defending himself, and how easily and speedily breaches in great
principles, when once made, are widened, we shall probably be disposed
to think that the course taken by the Parliament was open to some
objection. Neither House had before it anything which even so corrupt
a judge as Jeffreys could have directed a jury to consider as proof of
Monmouth's crime. The messengers examined by the Commons were not on
oath, and might therefore have related mere fictions without incurring
the penalties of perjury. The Lords, who might have administered an
oath, appeared not to have examined any witness, and to have had no
evidence before them except the letter of the Mayor of Lyme, which, in
the eye of the law, was no evidence at all. Extreme danger, it is true,
justifies extreme remedies. But the Act of Attainder was a remedy which
could not operate till all danger was over, and which would become
superfluous at the very moment at which it ceased to be null. While
Monmouth was in arms it was impossible to execute him. If he should
be vanquished and taken, there would be no hazard and no difficulty in
trying him. It was afterwards remembered as a curious circumstance that,
among zealous Tories who went up with the bill from the House of
Commons to the bar of the Lords, was Sir John Fenwick, member for
Northumberland. This gentleman, a few years later, had occasion to
reconsider the whole s