rcantile employments; and yet, when he comes before you,
you would imagine that he had been bred in the study of the sublimest
sciences, and had no concern in anything else,--that he had been engaged
in writing a poem, an Iliad, or some work that might revive fallen
literature. There is but one exception to his abhorrence of accounts: he
always contrives to make up a good account for himself.

My Lords, we have read to you a letter in which the Court of Directors
have described the disorders of their service, the utter ruin of it, the
corruption that prevailed in it, and the destruction of the country by
it. When we are said to exaggerate, we use no stronger words than they
do. We cannot mince the matter; your Lordships should not mince it; no
little paltry delicacies should hinder you, when there is a country
expiring under all these things, from calling the authors to a strict
account. The Court of Directors sent him that statement; they
recommended to him a radical reformation. What does he do? We will read
his letter of 1773, in which you will find seeds sown for the
propagation of all those future abuses which terminated in the utter and
irremediable destruction of the whole service. After he has praised the
Directors for the trust that they had placed in him, after expressing
his highest gratitude, and so on, he says,--

"While I indulge the pleasure which I receive from the past
successes of my endeavors, I own I cannot refrain from looking back
with a mixture of anxiety on the omissions by which I am sensible I
may since have hazarded the diminution of your esteem. All my
letters addressed to your Honorable Court, and to the Secret
Committee, repeat the strongest promises of prosecuting the
inquiries into the conduct of your servants, which you have been
pleased to commit particularly to my charge. You will readily
perceive that I must have been sincere in those declarations; since
it would have argued great indiscretion to have made them, had I
foreseen my inability to perform them. I find myself now under the
disagreeable necessity of avowing that inability; at the same time
I will boldly take upon me to affirm, that, on whomsoever you might
have delegated that charge, and by whatever powers it might have
been accompanied, it would have been sufficient to occupy the
entire attention of those who were intrusted with it, and, even