re not his own, but that he had
received them for their use. By this time his intercourse with gentlemen
of the law became more considerable than it had been before. When first
attacked for presents, he never denied the receipt of them, or pretended
to say they were for public purposes; but upon looking more into the
covenants, and probably with better legal advice, he found that no money
could be legally received for his own use; but as these bribes were
directly given and received as for his own use, yet (says he) "there was
an inward destination of them in my own mind to your benefit, and to
your benefit have I applied them."

Now here is a new system of bribery, contrary to law, very ingenious in
the contrivance, but, I believe, as unlikely to produce its intended
effect upon the mind of man as any pretence that was ever used. Here Mr.
Hastings changes his ground. Before, he was accused as a peculator; he
did not deny the fact; he did not refund the money; he fought it off; he
stood upon the defensive, and used all the means in his power to prevent
the inquiry. That was the first era of his corruption,--a bold,
ferocious, plain, downright use of power. In the second, he is grown a
little more careful and guarded,--the effect of subtilty. He appears no
longer as a defendant; he holds himself up with a firm, dignified, and
erect countenance, and says, "I am not here any longer as a delinquent,
a receiver of bribes, to be punished for what I have done wrong, or at
least to suffer in my character for it. No: I am a great inventive
genius, who have gone out of all the ordinary roads of finance, have
made great discoveries in the unknown regions of that science, and have
for the first time established the corruption of the supreme magistrate
as a principle of resource for government."

There are crimes, undoubtedly, of great magnitude, naturally fitted to
create horror, and that loudly call for punishment, that have yet no
idea of _turpitude_ annexed to them; but unclean hands, bribery,
venality, and peculation are offences of turpitude, such as, in a
governor, at once debase the person and degrade the government itself,
making it not only _horrible_, but vile and contemptible in the eyes of
all mankind. In this humiliation and abjectness of guilt, he comes here
not as a criminal on his defence, but as a vast fertile genius who has
made astonishing discoveries in the art of government,--"_Dicam insigne,
recens, alio indi