race such a scene of
prevarication, direct fraud, falsehood, and falsification of the public
accounts, was this. From bribes he knew he could never abstain; and his
then precarious situation made him the more rapacious. He knew that a
few of his former bribes had been discovered, declared, recorded,--that
for the moment, indeed, he was secure, because all informers had been
punished and all concealers rewarded. He expected hourly a total change
in the Council, and that men like Clavering and Monson might be again
joined to Francis, that some great avenger should arise from their
ashes,--"_Exoriare, aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor_,"--and that a more
severe investigation and an infinitely more full display would be made
of his robbery than hitherto had been done. He therefore began, in the
agony of his guilt, to cast about for some device by which he might
continue his offence, if possible, with impunity,--and possibly make a
merit of it. He therefore first carefully perused the act of Parliament
forbidding bribery, and his old covenant engaging him not to receive
presents. And here he was more successful than upon former occasions. If
ever an act was studiously and carefully framed to prevent bribery, it
is that law of the 13th of the King, which he well observes admits no
latitudes of construction, no subterfuge, no escape, no evasion. Yet has
he found a defence of his crimes even in the very provisions which were
made for their prevention and their punishment. Besides the penalty
which belongs to every informer, the East India Company was invested
with a fiction of property in all such bribes, in order to drag them
with more facility out of the corrupt hands which held them. The
covenant, with an exception of one hundred pounds, and the act of
Parliament, without any exception, declared that the Governor-General
and Council should receive no presents _for their own use_. He therefore
concluded that the system of bribery and extortion might be
clandestinely and safely carried on, provided the party taking the
bribes had an inward intention and mental reservation that they should
be privately applied to the Company's service in any way the briber
should think fit, and that on many occasions this would prove the best
method of supply for the exigencies of their service.

He accordingly formed, or pretended to form, a private bribe exchequer,
collateral with and independent of the Company's public exchequer,
though in so