ded
that he could not be criminally tried; and thus Hook, guilty or not, had
been ruined and disgraced for life for simple carelessness. True, the
custody of a nation's property makes negligence almost criminal; but
that does not excuse the punishment of a man before he is tried.

He was summoned, however, to the Colonial Audit Board, where he
underwent a trying examination; after which he was declared to be in the
debt of Government: a writ of extent was issued against him; nine months
were passed in that delightful place of residence--a Sponging-house,
which he then exchanged for the 'Rules of the Bench'--the only rules
which have no exception. From these he was at last liberated, in 1825,
on the understanding that he was to repay the money to Government if at
any time he should be in a position to do so.

His liberation was a tacit acknowledgment of his innocence of the charge
of robbery; his encumberment with a debt caused by another's
delinquencies was, we presume, a signification of his responsibility and
some kind of punishment for his carelessness. Certainly it was hard upon
Hook, that, if innocent, he should not have gone forth without a stain
on his character for honesty; and it was unjust, that, if guilty, he
should not have been punished. The judgment was one of those compromises
with stern justice which are seldom satisfactory to either party.

The fact was that, guilty or not guilty, Hook had been both incompetent
and inconsiderate. Doubtless he congratulated himself highly on
receiving, at the age of twenty-five, an appointment worth L2,000 a year
in the paradise of the world; but how short-sighted his satisfaction,
since this very appointment left him some ten years later a pauper to
begin life anew with an indelible stain on his character. It was absurd
to give so young a man such a post; but it was absolutely wrong in Hook
not to do his utmost to carry out his duties properly. Nay, he had
trifled with the public money in the same liberal--perhaps a _more_
liberal--spirit as if it had been his own--made advances and loans here
and there injudiciously, and taken little heed of the consequences.
Probably, at this day, the common opinion acquits Hook of a designed and
complicated fraud; but common opinion never did acquit him of
misconduct, and even by his friends this affair was looked upon with a
suspicion that preferred silence to examination.

But why take such pains to exonerate Hook from a charge