sailable evidence could
have justified the employment of such terms in a communication between
two representative bodies respecting a trusted servant of the Crown,
more especially in the case of one occupying so lofty a position.
Something is due to the proprieties, and to accuse a man of deviations
from candour and truth is of course merely a slightly periphrastic
method of charging him with falsehood. The Assembly, however, had become
convinced, not without reason, that Sir Francis's word was not to be
trusted. Other persons who had been brought into more or less intimate
relations with him had been driven to the same conclusion.[234] The fact
is that when his feelings were much stirred he knew not how to speak the
language of truth and soberness. He talked so much and so thoughtlessly
that he very frequently gave utterance to the thing which was not. Some
excuse might perhaps be made for one who, in the heat or haste of verbal
controversy, gives currency to erroneous statements. But Sir Francis's
mis-statements were not confined to verbal controversy. He had been
distinctly convicted of "a deviation from candour and truth" in a
deliberate official communication. The Assembly had requested that they
might be furnished with copies of any bond or agreement between him and
his Councillors respecting the administration of the Government in the
event of his Excellency's death or removal. To this request Sir Francis
had replied, explicitly denying the existence of any document of such a
nature. Yet upon the examination of certain of the Councillors it had
been proved that an agreement on the subject had actually been made, and
that it had been reduced to writing by his Excellency's own hand. The
devices to which he had had recourse in his attempts to prove that he
had merely been guilty of tergiversation instead of downright lying,
were such as positively to aggravate the original offence, and to fully
justify the Assembly in refusing to attach any weight to his unsupported
statement upon any subject.[235] As the weeks passed by, the quarrel
between him and the Assembly waxed positively ferocious. On the 20th of
April he prorogued Parliament, making a speech on the occasion which
must have occupied a full hour or more in delivery, and wherein he
reviewed, in his own inimitable fashion, and from his own point of view,
the various events by which his Administration had up to this time been
characterized. Any attempt to analyze