on, shall be strictly
observed. The reason is this, and a serious reason it is: official
tyranny and oppression, corruption, peculation, and bribery are crimes
so secret in their nature that we can hardly ever get to the proof of
them without the assistance of rules, orders, and regulations of a
positive nature, intended to prevent the perpetration of these crimes,
and to detect the offender in case the crimes should be actually
perpetrated. You ought, therefore, to presume, that, whenever such rules
or laws are broken, these crimes are intended to be committed; for you
have no means of security against the commission of secret crimes but by
enforcing positive laws, the breach of which must be always plain, open,
and direct. Such, for instance, is the spirit of the laws, that,
although you cannot directly prove bribery or smuggling in a hundred
cases where they have been committed, you can prove whether the proper
documents, proper cockets, proper entries in regular offices have been
observed and performed, or not. By these means you lock the door against
bribery, you lock the door against corruption, against smuggling and
contraband trade. But how? By falling upon and attacking the offence?
No, by falling upon and attacking the breach of the regulation. You
prove that the man broke the regulation, and, as he could have no other
motive or interest in breaking it, you presume that he broke it
fraudulently, and you punish the man not for the crime the regulation
was meant to prevent, but you punish him for the breach of the
regulation itself.

Next to the breach of these positive instructions, your Lordships will
attend to the consequent concealment and mystery by which it was
accompanied. All government must, to preserve its authority, be sincere
in its declarations and authentic in its acts. Whenever in any matter of
policy there is a mystery, you must presume a fraud; whenever in any
matter of money there is concealment, you must presume misconduct: you
must therefore affix your punishment to the breach of the rule;
otherwise the conviction of public delinquents would be unattainable.

I have therefore put before you that rule which he has violated; and we,
the Commons, call upon your Lordships to enforce that rule, and to
avenge the breach of it. You have seen the consequences of breaking the
rule; and we have charged and do charge it as a heavy aggravation of
those consequences, that, instead of consulting the Counc