are accustomed to view business in an
official and regular light, may appear unprecedented, if not improper, I
have but a few short remarks to suggest to your consideration." He looks
upon them and treats them as a set of low mechanical men, a set of
low-born book-keepers, as base souls, who in an account call for
explanation and precision. If there is no precision in accounts, there
is nothing of worth in them. You see he himself is an eccentric
accountant, a Pindaric book-keeper, an arithmetician in the clouds. "I
know," he says, "what the Directors desire: but they are mean people;
they are not of elevated sentiments; they are modest; they avoid
ostentation in taking of bribes: I therefore am playing cups and balls
with them, letting them see a little glimpse of the bribes, then
carrying them fairly away." Upon this he founds the applause of his own
breast.

Populus me sibilat; at mihi plaudo
Ipse domi, simul ac nummos contemplor in arca.

That private _ipse plaudo_ he may have in this business, which is a
business of money; but the applause of no other human creature will he
have for giving such an account as he admits this to be,--irregular,
uncertain, problematical, and of which no one can make either head or
tail. He despises us also, who are representatives of the people, and
have amongst us all the regular officers of finance, for expecting
anything like a regular account from him. He is hurt at it; he considers
it as a cruel treatment of him; he says, "Have I deserved this
treatment?" Observe, my Lords, he had met with no treatment, if
treatment it may be called, from us, of the kind of which he complains.
The Court of Directors had, however, in a way shameful, abject, low, and
pusillanimous, begged of him, as if they were his dependants, and not
his masters, to give them some light into the account; they desire a
receiver of money to tell from whom he received it, and how he applied
it. He answers, They may be hanged for a parcel of mean, contemptible
book-keepers, and that he will give them no account at all. He says, "If
you sue me"--There is the point: he always takes security in a court of
law. He considers his being called upon by these people, to whom he
ought as a faithful servant to give an account, and to do which he was
bound by an act of Parliament specially intrusting him with the
administration of the revenues, as a gross affront. He adds, that he is
ready to resign his defence, an