ient
clearness, the connection of the ministers with Mr. Atkinson at the
general election; I have laid open to you the connection of Atkinson
with Benfield; I have shown Benfield's employment of his wealth in
creating a Parliamentary interest to procure a ministerial protection; I
have set before your eyes his large concern in the debt, his practices
to hide that concern from the public eye, and the liberal protection
which he has received from the minister. If this chain of circumstances
does not lead you necessarily to conclude that the minister has paid to
the avarice of Benfield the services done by Benfield's connections to
his ambition, I do not know anything short of the confession of the
party that can persuade you of his guilt. Clandestine and collusive
practice can only be traced by combination and comparison of
circumstances. To reject such combination and comparison is to reject
the only means of detecting fraud; it is, indeed, to give it a patent
and free license to cheat with impunity.

I confine myself to the connection of ministers, mediately or
immediately, with only two persons concerned in this debt. How many
others, who support their power and greatness within and without doors,
are concerned originally, or by transfers of these debts, must be left
to general opinion. I refer to the reports of the Select Committee for
the proceedings of some of the agents in these affairs, and their
attempts, at least, to furnish ministers with the means of buying
General Courts, and even whole Parliaments, in the gross.[65]

I know that the ministers will think it little less than acquittal, that
they are not charged with having taken to themselves some part of the
money of which they have made so liberal a donation to their partisans,
though the charge may be indisputably fixed upon the corruption of their
politics. For my part, I follow their crimes to that point to which
legal presumptions and natural indications lead me, without considering
what species of evil motive tends most to aggravate or to extenuate the
guilt of their conduct. But if I am to speak my private sentiments, I
think that in a thousand cases for one it would be far less mischievous
to the public, and full as little dishonorable to themselves, to be
polluted with direct bribery, than thus to become a standing auxiliary
to the oppression, usury, and peculation of multitudes, in order to
obtain a corrupt support to their power. It is by bribing,