But what does he say to the Directors?  He says, “Upon the whole of these transactions, which to you, who are accustomed to view business in an official and regular light, may appear unprecedented, if not improper, I have but a few short remarks to suggest to your consideration.”  He looks upon them and treats them as a set of low mechanical men, a set of low-born book-keepers, as base souls, who in an account call for explanation and precision.  If there is no precision in accounts, there is nothing of worth in them.  You see he himself is an eccentric accountant, a Pindaric book-keeper, an arithmetician in the clouds.  “I know,” he says, “what the Directors desire:  but they are mean people; they are not of elevated sentiments; they are modest; they avoid ostentation in taking of bribes:  I therefore am playing cups and balls with them, letting them see a little glimpse of the bribes, then carrying them fairly away.”  Upon this he founds the applause of his own breast.

        Populus me sibilat; at mihi plaudo
    Ipse domi, simul ac nummos contemplor in arca.

That private ipse plaudo he may have in this business, which is a business of money; but the applause of no other human creature will he have for giving such an account as he admits this to be,—­irregular, uncertain, problematical, and of which no one can make either head or tail.  He despises us also, who are representatives of the people, and have amongst us all the regular officers of finance, for expecting anything like a regular account from him.  He is hurt at it; he considers it as a cruel treatment of him; he says, “Have I deserved this treatment?” Observe, my Lords, he had met with no treatment, if treatment it may be called, from us, of the kind of which he complains.  The Court of Directors had, however, in a way shameful, abject, low, and pusillanimous, begged of him, as if they were his dependants, and not his masters, to give them some light into the account; they desire a receiver of money to tell from whom he received it, and how he applied it.  He answers, They may be hanged for a parcel of mean, contemptible book-keepers, and that he will give them no account at all.  He says, “If you sue me”—­There is the point:  he always takes security in a court of law.  He considers his being called upon by these people, to whom he ought as a faithful servant to give an account, and to do which he was bound by an act of Parliament specially intrusting him with the administration of the revenues, as a gross affront.  He adds, that he is ready to resign his defence, and to answer upon honor or upon oath.  Answering upon honor is a strange way they have got in India, as your Lordships may see in the course of this inquiry.  But he forgets, that, being the Company’s servant, the Company may bring a bill in Chancery against him, and force him upon oath to give an account.  He has not, however, given them light enough or afforded them sufficient ground for a fishing bill in Chancery.