Still, it must be remembered that he was then at an advanced age, and deprived, in some degree, of that mental, and yet more of that physical, energy, which at an earlier period might possibly have concealed these defects. I have heard, indeed, that on previous occasions there had been moments when a temporary excitement gave a natural animation to his voice and gestures, and that then the excellence of his arguments was made strikingly manifest by an effective delivery.
His chief reputation in Parliament, nevertheless, is not as an orator, but as a person successfully connected with one of those great movements of opinion which are so long running their course, and which it is the fortune of a man’s life to encounter and be borne up upon when they are near their goal.
VII.
Sir Thomas More, in his “Utopia” (1520), says of thieving, that, “as the severity of the remedy is too great, so it is ineffectual.” In Erasmus, Raleigh, Bacon, are to be found almost precisely the same phrases and maxims that a few years ago startled the House of Commons as novelties. “What a lamentable case it is,” observes Sir Edward Coke (1620), “to see so many Christian men and women strangled on that cursed tree of the gallows, the prevention of which consisteth in three things:
‘Good education,
‘Good laws,
‘Rare pardons.’”
Evelyn, in his preface to “State Trials” (1730), observes, “that our legislation is very liberal of the lives of offenders, making no distinction between the most atrocious crimes and those of a less degree.”
“Experience,” says Montesquieu, “shows that in countries remarkable for the lenity of their laws, the spirit of its inhabitants is as much affected by slight penalties as in other countries by severe punishments.”[93]
This feeling became general amongst reflecting men in the middle and towards the end of the eighteenth century.