The right honorable gentleman is fond of parading on the motives of others, and on his own.  As to himself, he despises the imputations of those who suppose that anything corrupt could influence him in this his unexampled liberality of the public treasure.  I do not know that I am obliged to speak to the motives of ministry, in the arrangements they have made of the pretended debts of Arcot and Tanjore.  If I prove fraud and collusion with regard to public money on those right honorable gentlemen, I am not obliged to assign their motives; because no good motives can be pleaded in favor of their conduct.  Upon that case I stand; we are at issue; and I desire to go to trial.  This, I am sure, is not loose railing, or mean insinuation, according to their low and degenerate fashion, when they make attacks on the measures of their adversaries.  It is a regular and juridical course; and unless I choose it, nothing can compel me to go further.

But since these unhappy gentlemen have dared to hold a lofty tone about their motives, and affect to despise suspicion, instead of being careful not to give cause for it, I shall beg leave to lay before you some general observations on what I conceive was their duty in so delicate a business.

If I were worthy to suggest any line of prudence to that right honorable gentleman, I would tell him that the way to avoid suspicion in the settlement of pecuniary transactions, in which great frauds have been very strongly presumed, is, to attend to these few plain principles:—­First, to hear all parties equally, and not the managers for the suspected claimants only; not to proceed in the dark, but to act with as much publicity as possible; not to precipitate decision; to be religious in following the rules prescribed in the commission under which we act; and, lastly, and above all, not to be fond of straining constructions, to force a jurisdiction, and to draw to ourselves the management of a trust in its nature invidious and obnoxious to suspicion, where the plainest letter of the law does not compel it.  If these few plain rules are observed, no corruption ought to be suspected; if any of them are violated, suspicion will attach in proportion; if all of them are violated, a corrupt motive of some kind or other will not only be suspected, but must be violently presumed.

The persons in whose favor all these rules have been violated, and the conduct of ministers towards them, will naturally call for your consideration, and will serve to lead you through a series and combination of facts and characters, if I do not mistake, into the very inmost recesses of this mysterious business.  You will then be in possession of all the materials on which the principles of sound jurisprudence will found, or will reject, the presumption of corrupt motives, or, if such motives are indicated, will point out to you of what particular nature the corruption is.