uld give the Directors the least notice of them at all, as
they had answered his purpose, and he had dismissed them from his
remembrance." "I intended," he says, "always to keep them secret, though
I have declared to you solemnly, over and over again, that I did not. I
do not care how you discovered them; I have forgotten them; I have
dismissed them from my remembrance." Is this the way in which money is
to be received and accounted for?

He then proceeds thus:--"But when fortune threw a sum of money in my way
of a magnitude which could not be concealed, and the peculiar delicacy
of my situation at the time I received it made me more circumspect of
appearances, I chose to apprise my employers of it, which I did hastily
and generally: hastily, perhaps, to prevent the vigilance and activity
of secret calumny; and generally, because I knew not the exact amount of
which I was in the receipt, but not in the full possession. I promised
to acquaint them with the result as soon as I should be in possession of
it; and, in the performance of my promise, I thought it consistent with
it to add to the amount all the former appropriations of the same kind:
my good genius then suggesting to me, with a spirit of caution which
might have spared me the trouble of this apology, had I universally
attended to it, that, if I had suppressed them, and they were afterwards
known, I might be asked what were my motives for withholding a part of
these receipts from the knowledge of the Court of Directors and
informing them of the rest, it being my wish to clear up every doubt."

I am almost ashamed to remark upon the tergiversations and
prevarications perpetually ringing the changes in this declaration. He
would not have discovered this hundred thousand pounds, if he could have
concealed it: he would have discovered it, lest malicious persons should
be telling tales of it. He has a system of concealment: he never
discovers anything, but when he thinks it can be forced from him. He
says, indeed, "I could conceal these things forever, but my conscience
would not give me leave": but it is guilt, and not honesty of
conscience, that always prompts him. At one time it is the malice of
people and the fear of misrepresentation which induced him to make the
disclosure; and he values himself on the precaution which this fear had
suggested to him. At another time it is the magnitude of the sum which
produced this effect: nothing but the impossibility of conc