ing myself to every kind of scorn and
ignominy, to insults even from you. I have been preying and plundering
for you; I have gone through every stage of licentiousness and lewdness,
wading through every species of dirt and corruption, for your advantage.
I am now sinking into the extremity of private want; do give me
this--what? money? no, this bribe; rob me the man who gave me this
bribe; vote me--what? money of your own? that would be generous: money
you owe me? that would be just: no, money which I have extorted from
another man; and I call upon your justice to give it me." This is his
idea of justice. He says, "I am compelled to depart from that liberal
plan which I originally adopted, and to claim from your justice (for you
have forbid me to appeal to your generosity) the discharge of a debt
which I can with the most scrupulous integrity aver to be justly due,
and which I cannot sustain." Now, if any of the Company's servants may
say, "I have been extravagant, profuse,--it was all meant for your
good,--let me prey upon the country at my pleasure,--license my bribes,
frauds, and peculations, and then you do me justice,"--what country are
we in, where these ideas are ideas of generosity and justice?

It might naturally be expected that in this letter he would have given
some account of the person from whom he had taken this bribe. But here,
as in the other cases, he had a most effectual oblivion; the Ganges,
like Lethe, causes a drowsiness, as you saw in Mr. Middleton; they
recollect nothing, they know nothing. He has not stated, from that day
to this, from whom he took that money. But we have made the discovery.
And such is the use of Parliamentary inquiries, such, too, both to the
present age and posterity, will be their use, that, if we pursue them
with the vigor which the great trust justly imposed upon us demands, and
if your Lordships do firmly administer justice upon this man's frauds,
you will at once put an end to those frauds and prevarications forever.
Your Lordships will see, that, in this inquiry, it is the diligence of
the House of Commons, which he has the audacity to call _malice_, that
has discovered and brought to light the frauds which we shall be able to
prove against him.

I will now read to your Lordships an extract from that stuff, called a
defence, which he has either written himself or somebody else has
written for him, and which he owns or disclaims, just as he pleases,
when, under the slow