One counterargument seems to be that just like if the fathers spent money when they were alive, it's not punishing children that the fathers can't leave them what they don't own when they die.
But it's also about titles, which you can't spend like you do money. I also saw an argument that it's even an offense against the illustrious forebears of the nobility, who expected their children to be ennobled for all time.
Though it then got repealed in 1799, when there really was no danger from the Jacobites anymore.
Oh, interesting. But that was a time when the British government was really worried about treason. The French revolution had happened, and there was a crackdown on seditious reading clubs passing around Rights of Man, etc. They were so worried that they suspended habeas corpus and kept people locked up indefinitely without bringing charges, I suppose because so many people were being locked up that the court system couldn't keep up.
But thinking about it further, the old English punishment for treason is really harsher on the rich and titled--execution or transportation is enough of a deterrent for the kind of people involved in the potential rebellions of the 1790's. In fact, this is part of the Duke of Bedford's argument: we want the nobility to feel that they can revolt if they feel that it's necessary (such as, from his POV, in 1688), because if only poor people revolt, they will have no proper leaders and will take all his stuff set up arbitrary and tyrannical government. And in the 1790's, the threat wasn't coming from the nobility, so the government felt safe changing the punishment for treason. Is my off-the-cuff theory, anyway.
Re: Jacobites and treason
But it's also about titles, which you can't spend like you do money. I also saw an argument that it's even an offense against the illustrious forebears of the nobility, who expected their children to be ennobled for all time.
Though it then got repealed in 1799, when there really was no danger from the Jacobites anymore.
Oh, interesting. But that was a time when the British government was really worried about treason. The French revolution had happened, and there was a crackdown on seditious reading clubs passing around Rights of Man, etc. They were so worried that they suspended habeas corpus and kept people locked up indefinitely without bringing charges, I suppose because so many people were being locked up that the court system couldn't keep up.
But thinking about it further, the old English punishment for treason is really harsher on the rich and titled--execution or transportation is enough of a deterrent for the kind of people involved in the potential rebellions of the 1790's. In fact, this is part of the Duke of Bedford's argument: we want the nobility to feel that they can revolt if they feel that it's necessary (such as, from his POV, in 1688), because if only poor people revolt, they will have no proper leaders and will
take all his stuffset up arbitrary and tyrannical government. And in the 1790's, the threat wasn't coming from the nobility, so the government felt safe changing the punishment for treason. Is my off-the-cuff theory, anyway.