Memoirs of My Life and Writings | Page 5

have contracted with
more pleasure, though not perhaps at a cheaper rate, for the service of
King James. During his residence abroad, his concerns at home were
managed by his mother Hester, an active and notable woman. Her
second husband was a widower of the name of Acton: they united the
children of their first nuptials. After his marriage with the daughter of
Richard Acton, goldsmith in Leadenhall-street, he gave his own sister
to Sir Whitmore Acton, of Aldenham; and I am thus connected, by a
triple alliance, with that ancient and loyal family of Shropshire baronets.
It consisted about that time of seven brothers, all of gigantic stature;
one of whom, a pigmy of six feet two inches, confessed himself the last
and least of the seven; adding, in the true spirit of party, that such men
were not born since the Revolution. Under the Tory administration of
the four last years of Queen Anne (1710-1714) Mr. Edward Gibbon
was appointed one of the Commissioners of the Customs; he sat at that
Board with Prior; but the merchant was better qualified for his station
than the poet; since Lord Bolingbroke has been heard to declare, that he
had never conversed with a man, who more clearly understood the
commerce and finances of England. In the year 1716 he was elected
one of the Directors of the South Sea Company; and his books
exhibited the proof that, before his acceptance of this fatal office, he
had acquired an independent fortune of sixty thousand pounds.
But his fortune was overwhelmed in the shipwreck of the year twenty,
and the labours of thirty years were blasted in a single day. Of the use
or abuse of the South Sea scheme, of the guilt or innocence of my
grandfather and his brother Directors, I am neither a competent nor a

disinterested judge. Yet the equity of modern times must condemn the
violent and arbitrary proceedings, which would have disgraced the
cause of justice, and would render injustice still more odious. No
sooner had the nation awakened from its golden dream, than a popular
and even a parliamentary clamour demanded their victims: but it was
acknowledged on all sides that the South Sea Directors, however guilty,
could not be touched by any known laws of the land. The speech of
Lord Molesworth, the author of the State of Denmark, may shew the
temper, or rather the intemperance, of the House of Commons.
"Extraordinary crimes (exclaimed that ardent Whig) call aloud for
extraordinary remedies. The Roman lawgivers had not foreseen the
possible existence of a parricide; but as soon as the first monster
appeared, he was sewn in a sack, and cast headlong into the river; and I
shall be content to inflict the same treatment on the authors of our
present ruin." His motion was not literally adopted; but a bill of pains
and penalties was introduced, a retroactive statute, to punish the
offences, which did not exist at the time they were committed. Such a
pernicious violation of liberty and law can be excused only by the most
imperious necessity; nor could it be defended on this occasion by the
plea of impending danger or useful example. The legislature restrained
the persons of the Directors, imposed an exorbitant security for their
appearance, and marked their characters with a previous note of
ignominy: they were compelled to deliver, upon oath, the strict value of
their estates; and were disabled from making any transfer or alienation
of any part of their property. Against a bill of pains and penalties it is
the common right of every subject to be heard by his counsel at the bar:
they prayed to be heard; their prayer was refused; and their oppressors,
who required no evidence, would listen to no defence. It had been at
first proposed that one-eighth of their respective estates should be
allowed for the future support of the Directors; but it was speciously
urged, that in the various shades of opulence and guilt such an unequal
proportion would be too light for many, and for some might possibly be
too heavy. The character and conduct of each man were separately
weighed; but, instead of the calm solemnity of a judicial inquiry, the
fortune and honour of three and thirty Englishmen were made the topic
of hasty conversation, the sport of a lawless majority; and the basest
member of the committee, by a malicious word or, a silent vote, might

indulge his general spleen or personal animosity. Injury was aggravated
by insult, and insult was embittered by pleasantry. Allowances of
twenty pounds, or one shilling, were facetiously moved. A vague report
that a Director had formerly been concerned in another project, by
which some unknown persons had lost their money, was admitted as a
proof of his actual