me cases administered by those whom for his purposes he had
placed in the regular official department. It is no wonder that he has
taken to himself an extraordinary degree of merit. For surely such an
invention of finance, I believe, never was heard of,--an exchequer
wherein extortion was the assessor, fraud the cashier, confusion the
accountant, concealment the reporter, and oblivion the remembrancer: in
short, such as I believe no man, but one driven by guilt into frenzy,
could ever have dreamed of.

He treats the official and regular Directors with just contempt, as a
parcel of mean, mechanical book-keepers. He is an eccentric book-keeper,
a Pindaric accountant. I have heard of "the poet's eye in a fine frenzy
rolling." Here was a revenue exacted from whom he pleased, at what times
he pleased, in what proportions he pleased, through what persons he
pleased, by what means he pleased, to be accounted for or not, at his
discretion, and to be applied to what service he thought proper. I do
believe your Lordships stand astonished at this scheme; and indeed I
should be very loath to venture to state such a scheme at all, however I
might have credited it myself, to any sober ears, if, in his defence
before the House of Commons, and before the Lords, he had not directly
admitted the fact of taking the bribes or forbidden presents, and had
not in those defences, and much more fully in his correspondence with
the Directors, admitted the fact, and justified it upon these very
principles.

As this is a thing so unheard-of and unexampled in the world, I shall
first endeavor to account as well as I can for his motives to it, which
your Lordships will receive or reject, just as you shall find them tally
with the evidence before you: I say, his motives to it; because I
contend that public valid reasons for it he could have none; and the
idea of making the corruption of the Governor-General a resource to the
Company never did or could for a moment enter into his thoughts. I shall
then take notice of the juridical constructions upon which he justifies
his acting in this extraordinary manner; and lastly, show you the
concealments, prevarications, and falsehoods with which he endeavors to
cover it. Because wherever you find a concealment you make a discovery.
Accounts of money received and paid ought to be regular and official.

He wrote over to the Court of Directors, that there were certain sums
of money he had received and which we