So far back as in 1773 he thought that he could save an exceeding good fortune out of his place.  In 1782 he says, with gratitude, that he has made a decent private competency; but in two years after he sunk to the extremity of private want.  And how does he seek to relieve that want?  By taking a bribe:  bribes are no longer taken by him for the Company’s service, but for his own.  He takes the bribe with an express intention of keeping it for his own use, and he calls upon the Company for their sanction.  If the money was taken without right, no claim of his could justify its being appropriated to himself:  nor could the Company so appropriate it; for no man has a right to be generous out of another’s goods.  When he calls upon their justice and generosity, they might answer, “If you have a just demand upon our treasury, state it, and we will pay it; if it is a demand upon our generosity, state your merits, and we will consider them.”  “But I have paid myself by a bribe; I have taken another man’s money; and I call upon your justice—­to do what? to restore it to its owner? no—­to allow me to keep it myself.”  Think, my Lords, in what a situation the Company stands!  “I have done a great deal for you; this is the jackal’s portion; you have been the lion; I have been endeavoring to prog for you; I am your bribe-pander, your factor of corruption, exposing myself to every kind of scorn and ignominy, to insults even from you.  I have been preying and plundering for you; I have gone through every stage of licentiousness and lewdness, wading through every species of dirt and corruption, for your advantage.  I am now sinking into the extremity of private want; do give me this—­what? money? no, this bribe; rob me the man who gave me this bribe; vote me—­what? money of your own? that would be generous:  money you owe me? that would be just:  no, money which I have extorted from another man; and I call upon your justice to give it me.”  This is his idea of justice.  He says, “I am compelled to depart from that liberal plan which I originally adopted, and to claim from your justice (for you have forbid me to appeal to your generosity) the discharge of a debt which I can with the most scrupulous integrity aver to be justly due, and which I cannot sustain.”  Now, if any of the Company’s servants may say, “I have been extravagant, profuse,—­it was all meant for your good,—­let me prey upon the country at my pleasure,—­license my bribes, frauds, and peculations, and then you do me justice,”—­what country are we in, where these ideas are ideas of generosity and justice?

It might naturally be expected that in this letter he would have given some account of the person from whom he had taken this bribe.  But here, as in the other cases, he had a most effectual oblivion; the Ganges, like Lethe, causes a drowsiness, as you saw in Mr. Middleton; they recollect nothing, they know nothing.  He has not stated, from that day to this, from whom he took that money.  But we