it, and you have the
impudence to think of prosecuting him." So that the moment the bribe is
detected, it is instantly turned into a merit: and we shall prove that
this is the case with Mr. Hastings, whenever a bribe has been
discovered.

I am now to inform your Lordships, that, when he made these great
discoveries to the Court of Directors, he never tells them who gave him
the money, upon what occasion he received it, by what hands, or to what
purposes he applied it.

When he can himself give no account of his motives, and even declares
that he cannot assign any cause, I am authorized and required to find
motives for him,--corrupt motives for a corrupt act. There is no one
capital act of his administration that did not strongly imply
corruption. When a man is known to be free from all imputation of taking
money, and it becomes an established part of his character, the errors
or even crimes of his administration ought to be, and are in general,
traced to other sources. You know it is a maxim. But once convict a man
of bribery in any instance, and once by direct evidence, and you are
furnished with a rule of irresistible presumption that every other
irregular act by which unlawful gain may arise is done upon the same
corrupt motive. _Semel malus praesumitur semper malus._ As for good acts
candor, charity, justice oblige me not to assign evil motives, unless
they serve some scandalous purpose or terminate in some manifest evil
end, so justice, reason, and common sense compel me to suppose that
wicked acts have been done upon motives correspondent to their nature:
otherwise I reverse all the principles of judgment which can guide the
human mind, and accept even the symptoms, the marks and criteria of
guilt, as presumptions of innocence. One that confounds good and evil is
an enemy to the good.

His conduct upon these occasions may be thought irrational. But, thank
God, guilt was never a rational thing: it distorts all the faculties of
the mind; it perverts them; it leaves a man no longer in the free use of
his reason; it puts him into confusion. He has recourse to such
miserable and absurd expedients for covering his guilt as all those who
are used to sit in the seat of judgment know have been the cause of
detection of half the villanies in the world. To argue that these could
not be his reasons, because they were not wise, sound, and substantial,
would be to suppose, what is not true, that bad men were always discreet