You have seen, that, when he takes two hundred pounds a day for his entertainment, he tells you that in this very act he is starving fourteen hundred of the ancient nobility and gentry.  My Lords, you have the blood of nobles,—­if not, you have the blood of men in your veins:  you feel as nobles, you feel as men.  What would you say to a cruel Mogul exactor, by whom after having been driven from your estates, driven from the noble offices, civil and military, which you hold, driven from your bishoprics, driven from your places at court, driven from your offices as judges, and, after having been reduced to a miserable flock of pensioners, your very pensions were at last wrested from your mouths, and who, though at the very time when those pensions were wrested from you he declares them to have been the only bread of a miserable decayed nobility, takes himself two hundred pounds a day for his entertainment, and continues it till it amounts to sixteen thousand pounds?  I do think, that, of all the corruptions which he has not owned, but has not denied, or of those which he does in effect own, and of which he brings forward the evidence himself, the taking and claiming under color of an entertainment is ten times the most nefarious.

I shall this day only further trouble your Lordships to observe that he has never directly denied this transaction.  I have tumbled over the records, I have looked at every part, to see whether he denies it.  He did not deny it at the time, he did not deny it to the Court of Directors:  on the contrary, he did in effect acknowledge it, when, without directly acknowledging it, he promised them a full and liberal explanation of the whole transaction.  He never did give that explanation.  Parliament took up the business; this matter was reported at the end of the Eleventh Report; but though the House of Commons had thus reported it, and made that public which before was upon the Company’s records, he took no notice of it.  Then another occasion arises:  he comes before the House of Commons; he knows he is about to be prosecuted for those very corruptions; he well knows these charges exist against him; he makes his defence (if he will allow it to be his defence); but, though thus driven, he did not there deny it, because he knew, that, if he had denied it, it could be proved against him.  I desire your Lordships will look at that paper which we have given in evidence, and see if you find a word of denial of it:  there is much discourse, much folly, much insolence, but not one word of denial.  Then, at last, it came before this tribunal against him.  I desire to refer your Lordships to that part of his defence to the article in which this bribe is specifically charged:  he does not deny it there; the only thing which looks like a denial is one sweeping clause inserted, (in order to put us upon the proof,) that all the charges are to be conceived as denied; but a specific denial to this specific charge in no stage of the business, from beginning to end, has he once made.